Updated list of African IXPs – 22 countries

August 5, 2011 » BusinessOne Comment

April 2013: Added Congo-Brazzaville IXP and a tentative Guinea IXP.

November 2012: Added Lesotho IXP and Tunisia’s TunIXP. Updated status of Kinshasa, DRC’s KINIX to active.

August 2012: The Internet Society will conduct community mobilization and technical aspects workshops to support the establishment of Internet Exchange Points in AU Member States as part of the African Internet Exchange System (AXIS) project. Also, Euro-IX has released an update of African IXP activity.

April 2012: For an idea of how Kenyan and Nigerian IXPs work, read a recent assessment by the Internet Society.

December 2011: Added Sudan Internet Exchange Point (SIXP).

November 2011: Presentations from the East African IXP Taskforce Meeting can be found for Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda.

September 2011: Internet exchange points continue to serve Africa, although few have been created in the past few months:

In July, Kenya’s Internet Exchange Point (KIXP) recorded its highest ever traffic exchange – at 1 gigabyte per second. Much of the traffic is cached from Google. For reference, Johannesburg handled 1.2 Gbps last year.
A new IXP recently opened in Abuja, Nigeria and plans are in place to establish IXPs in Ibadan, Port Harcourt, Enugu, Kano and Maiduguri, Nigeria.
A non-profit IXP (NeutrINX) has begun operation in Certurion, South Africa. Operations may soon spread to Sandton and Cape Town.

Also, after searching high and low for more information on African IXPs, we present 7 new sources/data points/publications:

Packet Clearing House maintains a variety of global IXP lists. Their listing of African IXPs continues to appear conservative, listing only 21 IXPs in 17 nations. Sierra Leone’s SLIX is left out, for example. Of further interest is the fact that only Johannesburg IXP and Tanzania IXP now utilize IPv6.
The ICT Regulation Toolkit, a joint production of infoDev and the International Telecommunication Union, lists a couple of interesting facts about the efficiency of IXPs. International connectivity charges can be between 15 and 26 times greater than their equivalent local costs. As of 2004, there were 15 IXPs operating in Africa.
A Royal Pingdom post from 2008 took the PCH list and merged it with Internet traffic data to get a sense of how much Internet traffic is handled in Africa. One takeaway is that IXPs are useful even though relatively little data passes through in certain countries (ie. Swaziland).
A user-generated map (circa 2006?) of most African IXPs exists at Community Walk. Planned IXPs are on there as well.
The Global Internet Policy Initiative commissioned a 2002 paper on the importance of IXPs to the development of the Internet. Obstacles discussed include telecom monopolies eager to control costs, government regulators worried about budgets, and ISPs who fear making costs cheaper for their competitors. Also mentioned is the creation of a Pan African Virtual Internet Exchange (PAVIX). The continental backbone of sorts has yet to come to fruition.
A 2004 ITU report lists everything a country needs to know in order to start an IXP. The cost? $6,500 USD for equipment. The report also proposed to connect local and national IXPs with their counterparts in other countries. The idea is to rework the industry to ensure that regional traffic stays regional.
A January 2011 report on IXPs by Euro-IX concludes that most of the IXPs in Africa are established either by the government or a local organization of telecommunications. The report also points out how special initiatives have been set up by international companies and organizations to establish IXPs with the local ISPs. The current Euro-IX site has links to traffic stats from a variety of African IXPs (Egypt, Kenya, South Africa, Rwanda, Tunisia).

Original post from November 2010 with updated list:

Map showing African countries with at least one active IXP. Yellow fill indicates IXP presence on White African map in July 2008. Blue fill designates a nation where an IXP has come online in recent years.

By now, most are aware of the benefits of an Internet exchange point. In fact, White African did an excellent post on listing and explaining the benefits of IXPs back in July 2008. However, more exchange points have come online in the past months. Most of these points are located in southern Africa, with the most recent three starting in Sierra Leone, Mombasa, Kenya, and Abuja, Nigeria.

The following list is cross-referenced from an excellent Network Startup Resource Center map (routinely updated as of 2012) and the aforementioned White African post, along with the Packet Clearing House Internet Exchange Directory, a list from the 2006 AfrISPA presentation titled “The role of Academia in ISPA and IXP“, and some substantial Googling. Information surrounding specific IXPs is often difficult to find, but the following list should represent much of what is currently active (and planned). The Wikipedia list of IXPs is of limited help.

African IXPs:

CGIXP / Brazzaville, Congo / May 2013
TunIXP / Tunis, Tunisia / 2011
DINX / Durban, South Africa / Sept 2012
LIXP / Maseru, Lesotho / Aug 2011
SIXP / Khartoum, Sudan / 2011
EAIXP / 5 East African nations /
NeutrINX / Centurion, South Africa / Sept 2011
IXPN / Abuja, Nigeria / Jul 2011
IXPN / Lagos, Nigeria / 2006
Lusaka IXP / Lusaka, Zambia / Jun 2006
NIX / Windhoek, Namibia / 2005
CINX / Cape Town, South Africa / 2009?
HBIX / Helderberg, South Africa / 2008?
JINX / Johannesburg, South Africa / Dec 1996
GINX / Grahamstown, South Africa / Mar 2005
MEIX / Cairo, Egypt / May 2007
CAIX / Cairo, Egypt / 2004
CR-IX / Cairo, Egypt / Dec 2002
SLIX / Freetown, Sierra Leone / Jun 2010
KIXP-MSA / Mombasa, Kenya / Aug 2010 (non-operational)
KIXP / Nairobi, Kenya / Nov 2000
MIX / Blantyre, Malawi / Dec 2008
CI-IXP / Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire / Jun 2007 (non-operational)
SZIXP / Mbabane, Swaziland / Jun 2004
Moz-IX / Maputo, Mozambique / May 2002
TIX / Dar es Salaam, Tanzania / Jan 2004
AIXP / Arusha, Tanzania / 2007
UIXP / Kampala, Uganda / May 2003
KINIX / Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo / Sep 2002, Nov 2012
RINEX / Kigali, Rwanda / Jul 2004
GIXP / Accra, Ghana / May 2005
ZINX / Harare, Zimbabwe / July 2001
Angola-IXP / Luanda, Angola / 2006
BINX / Gaborone, Botswana / 2006
MIXP / Ebene Cybercity, Mauritius / Jun 2006

Planned African IXPs as of 2013 (these have been mentioned since 2006):

Guinea IXP / Conakry (to be implemented by France-IX in April 2013)
Burundi IXP / Bujumbura, Burundi (to be operational in 2013)
Mwanza and Dodoma, Tanzania (as of July 2012)
Ibadan, Port Harcourt, Enugu, Kano and Maiduguri, Nigeria (mentioned in August 2011 and again in March 2012)
Benin Internet Exchange (a 74-page feasibility study for BENIX was published in 2012)
Lome Internet eXchange (Togo)
Bamako Internet eXchange (Mali)
Yaounde Internet eXchange (Cameroon)
Dakar Internet eXchange (Senegal)
Banjul Internet eXchange (The Gambia)
Bangui Internet eXchange (Central African Republic)
Gabon Internet eXchange