Only 36% of people in Africa are online, according to 2025 International Telecommunication Union (ITU) estimates. But every year, more are connecting, creating new opportunities to access education, government services, information, and economic growth.
As this trend continues, it is not enough to focus only on connecting more people. To benefit fully from what the Internet offers, access also needs to be meaningful.
Meaningful connectivity relies on several conditions, including quality, availability, affordability, access to devices, skills, and security. This is where local Internet infrastructure matters.
Peering, supported by strong Internet exchange points and local technical communities, helps keep more Internet traffic closer to where people generate and use it. This can reduce costs, improve performance, and strengthen the Internet experience for users.
Community-centered connectivity initiatives, such as community networks, can help expand coverage, increase Internet availability, improve local skills, and foster online safety through local governance. Peering plays a different but equally important role: it helps make Internet access more affordable and reliable.
In places without a healthy peering ecosystem, even local Internet traffic may have to travel long distances, sometimes outside the country, before reaching its destination. If a person sends an email to someone nearby, the data may still depend on international transit routes before finding its way back.
This increases costs for Internet service providers and can affect reliability. If there is an outage or disruption along the route, it can delay or interrupt local traffic. Those costs and risks can eventually affect the people and businesses that rely on the service.
When networks exchange traffic locally, the picture changes. Internet service providers, content networks, and other operators can exchange data through a local Internet exchange point, or IXP. This reduces the distance data has to travel, lowers the cost of moving traffic across networks, and improves speed and reliability.
Local traffic exchange is one of several factors that can affect Internet affordability. Prices also depend on the local policy environment, market competition, currency shifts, international connectivity, and other economic conditions. But when transit and operating costs are high, there is less room to improve affordability for users.
Across Africa, local technical communities are helping address this challenge by building and strengthening the infrastructure that allows more traffic to stay local.
This is why the Internet Society works with the Coalition for Digital Africa—which focuses on meaningful connectivity, resilient Internet infrastructure, and local technical capacity—on peering initiatives. The coalition supports the work necessary to make access more affordable, reliable, and sustainable.
Across the region, there has been significant progress in Internet affordability and reliability. Burkina Faso is one example. In 2020, a person there would need to spend 13% of the average income on a low-usage mobile data plan. According to recent data from Internet Society Pulse, traffic exchange capacity has grown consistently over the past five years, and 80% of networks are either members of IXPs themselves or are customers of IXP members. By 2025, Burkina Faso residents only needed to spend 0.2% of the average income to afford a basic mobile broadband plan.
These changes are happening in different ways across the continent. Progress is slower in some countries than in others. Strengthening peering infrastructure requires a lot of community collaboration, technical capacity, and access to funding. But over time, these investments can improve the quality, affordability, and resilience of Internet access.
In 2023, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), through the Coalition for Digital Africa initiative, and the Internet Society partnered to support technical communities in African countries to build or expand their IXPs. Through the Internet Society Foundation’s Sustainable Peering Infrastructure Grant Program, four countries have deployed new IXPs or expanded the capacity and resilience of existing ones.
In Benin, the cost of connectivity fell from nearly 25% of an average person’s income in 2018 to a little over 5% in 2025. Internet penetration also grew from 19% in 2018 to 34% in 2024. At the end of 2024, the technical community completed the deployment of the Cotonou Internet Exchange, known as COTIX, launching with four members. As part of the project, the Internet Society trained local engineers in IXP operations and Border Gateway Protocol routing, helping support the IXP’s long-term sustainability.
Rwanda has also seen progress. Internet penetration grew from 19% in 2018 to 32% in 2024, and the Rwanda Internet Exchange, RINEX, has become a central part of the country’s growing digital ecosystem. Through the Sustainable Peering Infrastructure Grant Program, RINEX enhanced and expanded its operations, including installing new equipment at its disaster recovery site to help strengthen resilience and security.
Madagascar is taking steps in the same direction after reviving its main IXP, the Madagascar Global Internet Exchange, or MGIX. The country has shown sustained growth in Internet penetration and is now focused on building a sustainable peering community and attracting new IXP members.
In Malawi, the Lilongwe Internet Exchange, LLIX, launched with five peers. Malawi still has low Internet penetration, with only 19% of the population connected compared with the 40% average in Africa. But the country is growing fast: in 2018, Internet penetration was 9%. This growth increases the need for stronger local infrastructure that can support resilience, affordability, and a better Internet experience.
As these improvements take hold, they can support better services, more affordable access, and more resilient infrastructure. The Coalition for Digital Africa, ICANN, the Internet Society, and local technical communities are helping turn local priorities into practical infrastructure, skills, and partnerships that support more meaningful Internet access across Africa.
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