good news from africa – IXPs support increase in local Internet traffic
by P
Reporting from the multi-year, multi-country, multi-stakeholder, multi-million-pound, multi-multi-multi initiative CATIA (catalysing access to ICT in Africa) workshop, one of the success stories comes from the Internet Exchange Point (IXP) project. The project facilitators from afrISPa just presented some of the impact their work has had over the past 3 years, and they focused on the decreasing cost of access (more than 50% reduction of international traffic via the SAT-3 cable as well as end-user prices) and the increase in local traffic (up to 400% in some countries). Attribution of such changes to individual projects is always difficult, but the project leaders argue that they were able to create local ISP associations, which then became key actors in lobbying the local Governments. Bottom line is that the Internet is still too expensive for most Africans, but it’s good to see that some initiatives are able to convince policy makers of the wide benefits that bringing down cost and increasing access can have for local development.