Building the case for Africa: Using open peering to reduce risk and expose the myriad opportunities available in the African market to new entrants

Presentation Synopsis – RIPE 66, 13-17 May 2013

Dublin, Ireland

Africa is the 2^nd largest continent, after Asia, in both size and population. With over 1-billion inhabitants and over 167-million Internet users, it is a significant emerging market.

Various policy and regulatory changes across Africa have seen a leap in the slow progression from Africa’s reliance on satellite connectivity to fibre-optic and even terrestrial wireless networks. As connectivity providers move further into the continent, the challenges that have defined Africa’s sluggish Internet growth are gradually being met. In many instances, cross border and cross continental internet traffic is still routed via the large exchanges in Europe, resulting in delayed delivery and increased costs for African users.

In 2013, African Internet Service Providers are now presented with the ability to join multi-lateral peering exchanges where connection to major international carriers is possible.  This not only allows them to offer African consumers access to high speed connections, but the connection is now at a dramatically reduced cost ultimately opening up connectivity to a much larger market and thus exposing business opportunities to a larger consumer market. 

South Africa as a springboard to Africa…

Telecommunications is one of the fastest growing sectors of the South African economy, driven by rapid growth in mobile telephony and broadband connectivity. With a network that is 99.9% digital and includes the latest in fixed-line, terrestrial fibre, wireless and satellite communication, the country has the most developed telecoms network in Africa.

In 2009, South Africa ranked 34th in the world in terms of fixed-line telephony, with over 4.3-million fixed-line connections. South Africa is one of the fastest growing mobile communications markets in the world. As of 2012, there were over 59-million active sim cards in South Africa, ranking the country 26th in terms of subscriber numbers.

Using the connectivity in Africa

An increase in the number of undersea data cables linking Africa to the rest of the world, as well as market liberalisation, has seen a shake-up in local internet access, with the number of internet users finally breaking through the 15% mark in internet penetration for the continent.

The Seacom submarine fibre-optic cable system linking south and east Africa to global networks via India and Europe was commissioned in July 2009, while the East African Submarine Cable System (EASSy), that links countries along the continent's eastern coast to the rest of the world, started service in August 2010.

WACS and ACE, the west African cable system linking southern and western African countries respectively with Europe were operational in 2012.

Several other cable systems linking Africa to Asia and the southern Americas are already under constructions: BRICS, WASACE, SAexpress and SACS. These cable systems are due to be operational in late 2014. See cable map below:

The challenge…

The challenge for the industry is to continue to remove distance and cost barriers to Internet growth and innovation and identify locally relevant methods for content distribution to be faster and more efficient on the continent. 

The case for local exchanges, specifically those offering free, multi-lateral peering exchanges have never been stronger. As a driver of reducing transit costs and bringing content closer to the end user, a major opportunity exists to improve distribution of connectivity in Africa, drive growth in broadband access and ultimately ‘light-up’ a previously dark continent.