By Plans to expand and develop the internet in Africa may just have thicken as Mauritius will host the 10th anniversary edition of the Africa Peering and Interconnection Forum (AfPIF), which is being organised by the Internet Society and African IXP Association (AFIX) in collaboration with Rogers Capital.
AfPIF 2019 will connect and bring key infrastructure, service, and content providers together with policymakers in order to identify and discuss ways to improve network interconnection, lower the cost of connectivity, and increase locally available content, for the benefit of Internet users across the region.
AfPIF is an annual event that serves as a platform to develop the African Internet, and was created to address the fact that most of Africa’s local Internet traffic is exchanged outside the continent. At the same time, Africa imported over 99% of the Internet traffic consumed, which created an “Internet Transit Deficit”. Exchanging traffic locally through Internet Exchange Points (IXP), reduces Internet access costs and network delays and increases content access speeds.
“AfPIF has contributed considerably in changing the Interconnection environment in Africa over the last 10 years. Locally traffic exchanged traffic has increased from less than 1 GB to close to 800 GB today,” explained Dawit Bekele, Africa Regional Bureau Director for the Internet Society. “This is a remarkable The achievement thanks to the strong community established around AfPIF and I am sure that this year’s event will contribute to an even more interconnected African Internet,” he added.
This is the first time that the event is being held in Mauritius and the Indian Ocean Islands region, which is seeking to develop its role as an innovation hub for the region. The Minister of Technology, Communication and Innovation, Hon. Yogida Sawmynaden is due to speak at the event and Rogers Capital will act as the local host.
“We are pleased to host AfPIF 2019 in Mauritius especially with the special privilege that this year’s event will coincide with the celebration of its 10 years of existence. As a diversified and sophisticated business hub for the region, we believe Mauritius may help open new business perspectives for the AfPIF delegates. We are looking forward to welcoming the delegates in August 2019 and to providing our support for the development of Internet Infrastructure in Africa,” said Dev Hurkoo, Managing Director, Rogers Capital-Technology.
Over 250 participants from across the African continent are expected to attend the event, with leading technology providers Liquid Telecom, Seacom and Huawei as Platinum sponsors and AFRINIC, Emtel Business, Linx, Microsoft and Rogers Capital as Gold sponsors. A full list of sponsors can be found at: https://www.AfPIF.org/AfPIF-10/.
Concluding on the opportunities ahead, Kyle Spencer, Co-Coordinator of the African IXP Association said “our target is to localize 80% of Africa’s Internet traffic by 2020, and I believe we’re well on our way. Packet Clearing House reports that Africa currently sees the highest growth of domestic bandwidth production in the world, registering a 92% increase from 410 Gbps to 786 Gbps within the last 12 months — and our internal industry benchmarking data corroborates this. It’s an exciting time for Africa, and we look forward to building on this momentum in Mauritius.”
Barbra Nasimiyu, Nairobi
