--- title: "NAPAfrica Internet Exchange Leads the Way for Internet Growth" description: "NAPAfrica throughput extends beyond 2Tbps as the exchange delivers strong growth driven by dynamic peering community & increasing demand." image: https://www.teraco.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/napafrica-traffic-new.png canonical: https://www.teraco.co.za/news/napafrica-leads-the-way-for-internet-growth-and-accessibility-in-africa/ url: https://teraco.getmd.ai/news/napafrica-leads-the-way-for-internet-growth-and-accessibility-in-africa/.md last_converted: 2026-11-11T10:13:56.841Z --- ```json { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@graph": [ { "@type": "Article", "@id": "https://www.teraco.co.za/news/napafrica-leads-the-way-for-internet-growth-and-accessibility-in-africa/#article", "isPartOf": { "@id": "https://www.teraco.co.za/news/napafrica-leads-the-way-for-internet-growth-and-accessibility-in-africa/" }, "author": { "name": "Webmaster", "@id": "https://www.teraco.co.za/#/schema/person/7da9e08698f801e47db5f77ec9af2ebd" }, "headline": "NAPAfrica leads the way for internet growth and accessibility in South Africa", "datePublished": "2021-07-30T06:25:37+00:00", "dateModified": "2023-08-08T08:47:56+00:00", "mainEntityOfPage": { "@id": "https://www.teraco.co.za/news/napafrica-leads-the-way-for-internet-growth-and-accessibility-in-africa/" }, "wordCount": 646, "publisher": { "@id": "https://www.teraco.co.za/#organization" }, "image": { "@id": "https://www.teraco.co.za/news/napafrica-leads-the-way-for-internet-growth-and-accessibility-in-africa/#primaryimage" }, "thumbnailUrl": "https://www.teraco.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/21-Website-Thumbnail-NAPAfrica.jpg", "keywords": [ "cloud", "content", "growth", "Internet", "internet exchange", "NAPAfrica" ], "articleSection": [ "News" ], "inLanguage": "en-ZA" }, { "@type": "WebPage", "@id": "https://www.teraco.co.za/news/napafrica-leads-the-way-for-internet-growth-and-accessibility-in-africa/", "url": "https://www.teraco.co.za/news/napafrica-leads-the-way-for-internet-growth-and-accessibility-in-africa/", "name": "NAPAfrica Internet Exchange Leads the Way for Internet Growth", "isPartOf": { "@id": "https://www.teraco.co.za/#website" }, "primaryImageOfPage": { "@id": "https://www.teraco.co.za/news/napafrica-leads-the-way-for-internet-growth-and-accessibility-in-africa/#primaryimage" }, "image": { "@id": "https://www.teraco.co.za/news/napafrica-leads-the-way-for-internet-growth-and-accessibility-in-africa/#primaryimage" }, "thumbnailUrl": "https://www.teraco.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/21-Website-Thumbnail-NAPAfrica.jpg", "datePublished": "2021-07-30T06:25:37+00:00", "dateModified": "2023-08-08T08:47:56+00:00", "description": "NAPAfrica throughput extends beyond 2Tbps as the exchange delivers strong growth driven by dynamic peering community & increasing demand.", "breadcrumb": { "@id": "https://www.teraco.co.za/news/napafrica-leads-the-way-for-internet-growth-and-accessibility-in-africa/#breadcrumb" }, "inLanguage": "en-ZA", "potentialAction": [ { "@type": "ReadAction", "target": [ "https://www.teraco.co.za/news/napafrica-leads-the-way-for-internet-growth-and-accessibility-in-africa/" ] } ] }, { "@type": "ImageObject", "inLanguage": "en-ZA", "@id": "https://www.teraco.co.za/news/napafrica-leads-the-way-for-internet-growth-and-accessibility-in-africa/#primaryimage", "url": "https://www.teraco.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/21-Website-Thumbnail-NAPAfrica.jpg", "contentUrl": "https://www.teraco.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/21-Website-Thumbnail-NAPAfrica.jpg", "width": 1200, "height": 630, "caption": "NAPAfrica Logo" }, { "@type": "BreadcrumbList", "@id": "https://www.teraco.co.za/news/napafrica-leads-the-way-for-internet-growth-and-accessibility-in-africa/#breadcrumb", "itemListElement": [ { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 1, "name": "Home", "item": "https://www.teraco.co.za/" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 2, "name": "NAPAfrica leads the way for internet growth and accessibility in South Africa" } ] }, { "@type": "WebSite", "@id": "https://www.teraco.co.za/#website", "url": "https://www.teraco.co.za/", "name": "Teraco", "description": "A Digital Realty Company", "publisher": { "@id": "https://www.teraco.co.za/#organization" }, "potentialAction": [ { "@type": "SearchAction", "target": { "@type": "EntryPoint", "urlTemplate": "https://www.teraco.co.za/?s={search_term_string}" }, "query-input": { "@type": "PropertyValueSpecification", "valueRequired": true, "valueName": "search_term_string" } } ], "inLanguage": "en-ZA" }, { "@type": "Organization", "@id": "https://www.teraco.co.za/#organization", "name": "Teraco. 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Established in 2012, with the aim to stimulate the development of an Internet exchange (IXP) within a truly vendor-neutral environment, NAPAfrica has grown into the continent’s biggest IXP and the 6th largest globally by number of member connections. Most recently, NAPAfrica announced that it had reached a peering throughput milestone of more than 2Tbps, with over 500 organisations now actively peering. “The growth of NAPAfrica is a great African success story,” says Jan Hnizdo, CEO, Teraco. The internet exchange’s infrastructure resides within vendor-neutral colocation data centres located in Cape Town, Durban, and Johannesburg. “What started as an idea to attract global content to African shores while also improving latency, has emerged as a leading interconnection hub that is shaping the growth and access of the fibre internet across the African continent.” It took eight years for traffic throughput on the internet exchange to reach 1Tbps, and only a little over fifteen months to double that. ![NAPAfrica Internet Traffic Growth - 2.1 Tbps](https://www.teraco.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/napafrica-traffic-new-1024x538.png) NAPAfrica has made it possible for peering members to access global content within African borders and keep local traffic local. Previously, much of our traffic was routed via Europe. More recently, many new enterprises have joined the NAPAfrica peering community to improve resilience, lower costs, and reduce the latency of accessing content and applications such as Microsoft 365, AWS Cloudfront, Akamai and Cloudflare. NAPAfrica has become a cornerstone for organisations in supporting their internet and communication needs with work-from-home strategies. The continued investment into critical telecommunications infrastructure in South Africa has contributed enormously to the growth of NAPAfrica. The continent’s demand grows for content and cloud services like Microsoft Azure and AWS. African enterprises are leveraging the benefits of peering by connecting with cloud deployments, networks, security providers, and content providers within the NAPAfrica ecosystem as part of their move to a digital economy. The number of IXPs in South Africa has also grown exponentially since the launch of NAPAfrica, increasing from 19 in 2012 to 46 in 2020. “A 140% increase in the number of African exchanges is good news for the continent and its interconnectedness. We are proud of the innovative role NAPAfrica has played in shaping Africa’s Internet access and usage,” says Hnizdo. Deloitte’s Value of Connectivity report says Internet connectivity has already hugely benefitted developed economies, providing far-reaching economic and social advantages. Extending these opportunities to developing economies in South Africa is critical to make the transition from a resource-based to a knowledge-based economy. It is in the creation of a knowledge-based economy. South Africa has seen the immense growth of cloud providers launching services across the continent as the need for cloud-based technology increases. Coupled with this is the extensive investment and uptake in fibre and subsea cable infrastructure, allowing users access to higher capacities. Michele McCann, Head of Interconnection & Peering, Teraco, says people have now discovered the real power of fibre internet, be it working from home or for pure entertainment. “We are seeing NAPAfrica traffic grow daily as enterprises start investing in larger bandwidth options to address work-from-home needs. From a content perspective, the UEFA EURO 2020 added over 400Gbps of additional traffic to the exchange.” Increased demand on networks, to service remote users, has driven the adoption of key cloud and security applications. These include Microsoft 365 services, AWS, Cloudflare and Zscaler. NAPAfrica continues to play a significant role by servicing not only South Africa but also the Southern African region. Similar traffic growth numbers occur elsewhere on the continent, including Angola, Botswana, DRC, Lesotho, Madagascar, Mauritius, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Réunion, Seychelles, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe. ### Related Reading ### Recent - [NAPAfrica and ZANOG enhance community-driven interconnection in Cape Town’s growing digital ecosystem](https://www.teraco.co.za/news/napafrica-and-zanog-enhance-community-driven-interconnection-in-cape-town-growing-digital-ecosystem/) - [Teraco expands executive management team](https://www.teraco.co.za/news/teraco-expands-executive-management-team/) - [Teraco announces CT1 data centre expansion in Rondebosch, Cape Town](https://www.teraco.co.za/news/teraco-announces-ct1-data-centre-expansion-in-rondebosch-cape-town/) - [NAPAfrica and Teraco ACX growing Africa’s digital community as NAPAfrica hits 6Tbps](https://www.teraco.co.za/news/napafrica-and-teraco-acx-growing-africas-digital-community-as-napafrica-hits-6tbps/) - [Teraco completes CT2 data centre expansion, increasing Cape Town’s hyperscale capacity to 50MW](https://www.teraco.co.za/news/teraco-completes-ct2-data-centre-expansion/) ### Subscribe to our Newsletter Sign up for our newsletter and get the latest news and updates from Teraco. 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