The continent is on the move: there are more than 70 Internet exchange points across Africa; Internet penetration across the continent has grown from less than 10 per cent in 2010 to over 38 per cent today; and Africa hosts some of the world’s best technical leadership, within a thriving ecosystem rooted in civil society.
21 years’ ago, if someone in Lagos wanted to send an email to someone in Abuja – a distance of about seven hundred and sixty kilometres – that email would first travel thousands of kilometres to Europe or North America before returning to Nigeria. African Internet traffic was taking a detour around the world to reach its neighbours.
This detour was expensive and slow – burdening local businesses with high transit costs and leaving African Internet users with sluggish and unreliable connections.
In response to that challenge, the African Peering and Interconnection Forum was born in 2010. The goal was simple: to solve this fundamental connectivity problem. Together, network operators, technical experts and policymakers have successfully created much of the infrastructure to keep local Internet traffic local.
Driven in no small part by Nigerian commitment, collaboration and energy, a significant amount of African Internet traffic now stays in Africa.
