The event, co-hosted by the Internet Society (ISOC) and the African IXP Association (AFIX), drew an impressive gathering of global and local industry leaders, regulators and stakeholders advancing Africa’s digital landscape and strengthening connectivity across the continent.

Emmanuel Kwarteng, Ghana’s Country Manager, MainOne, an Equinix Company, emphasized the significance of AfPIF 2023 in fostering collaborations across Africa’s digital ecosystem.

“In an era of rapid technological advancement, the Internet and content have emerged as two major pillars of modern society, transcending geographical boundaries and revolutionizing the way we do business, communicate, learn, and interact with the world around us,” stated Kwarteng. “We cannot overemphasize the critical role that peering plays in enhancing the reach, reliability, and efficiency of this new digital lifestyle. By collaborating with the Internet Society on the shared vision of an inclusive and interconnected internet society for the continent, we believe that the transformative partnerships formed here will drive value for a more connected Africa.”

Distinguished speakers at the event included Ursula Owusu-Ekuful, Ghana’s Minister of Communications and Digitization; Prof. Eser Osie-Yeboah Boateng, Deputy Director General of the National Communication Authority, Ghana; and Prof. Nii Quaynor, widely known as the Father of Ghana’s internet.

The Minister emphasized the need of a robust peering and interconnection ecosystem for the efficient operation of the country’s digital initiatives.

“This will permit local traffic and promote ICT, which is crucial for any nation wishing to participate fully in the global Internet economy. It will enhance the end-user experience, bring down access costs, and encourage the growth of regional internet ecosystems,” noted the Minister.

She also highlighted the importance of supporting the aggregation of internet traffic at interconnection hubs across Africa, which would attract international operators to establish their points of presence (POPs) in the West African region.

MainOne’s role as the host of AfPIF 2023 and its active commitment in fostering interconnections align with its broader mission of driving digital transformation across West Africa.

This commitment was further solidified as the Ghana Internet Exchange (GIX) and MainOne, an Equinix Company Ghana firmed up their partnership with an announcement of the extension of the GIX network to the MDXi Appolonia Data Center at the event.

MainOne continues to lead with investments in infrastructural development and new Data Center builds across the West African region and is set to launch a new data center in Cote d’Ivoire before the end of this year.

The event is scheduled for 22 – 24 August 2023 at the Movenpick Ambassador Hotel in Accra, Ghana. Stakeholders from the global data and connectivity industry will grace the Forum.

AfPIF is an a unique annual conference that aims to promotes the development of national and cross-border interconnection in Africa and offers offering the African technical community a unique opportunity to showcase interconnection challenges and opportunities.

It focuses on Internet interconnection dynamics, content distribution, and transit obstacles at local and regional levels.

The annual event aims to encourage peering and networking opportunities by offering a Forum where key stakeholders – infrastructure and service providers, IXPs, regulators, and policymakers – can interact in a casual yet professional setting, exchanging their experiences and gaining insights from industry experts.

The Forum aims to foster peering and networking opportunities where key players- infrastructure and service providers, IXPs, regulators, and policymakers can engage in a relaxed but business-like environment, sharing their experiences and learning from experts in the field.

Speaking on the support of AF-CIX for the Forum, the Head of Peering and Exchange Platforms, Obinna Adumike, said, “We are glad proud to be a silver sponsor for the 2023 African Peering and Interconnection Forum (AfPIF) billed to hold in Ghana.

The choice to sponsor this event is in line with our business objective of endorsing the enhancement of interconnection in Africa. We are dedicated to promoting traffic localization, cost efficiency, resiliency, and security for ISPs, CCPs and Enterprises. As we are all aware, today’s world heavily relies on interconnectivity.

The decision to sponsor the event aligns with our business objective of supporting the growth of interconnection in Africa. We are committed to driving traffic localization, cost efficiency resiliency and security andfor our networks and enterprise businesses, resiliency and security. As we all know, today’s world largely depends on interconnectivity”.

According to him, “AF-CIX provides a platform for peering interconnection services between service providers, cloud and content providers, Content Delivery Networks and Enterprises business. Beyond traffic growth and localization, we provide the enablement for next level digital adoption, low latency cloud adoption and functional traffic engineering for Participants.

He stated that with the interconnect platform, participants or including businesses enterprises would enjoy the largest aggregation of cloud, content, and network service providers. “The platform was launched in March 2023 and already has over 20 Participants”.

AF-CIX, hosted in Rack Centre as part of innovations to support the growth of the Internet in Africa through effective and functional traffic localization, cost-effectiveness, resiliency, enterprise digitization acceleration, and community support, among other reasons- is specifically designed to complement the role of Internet Exchange Point of Nigeria by providing a redundant path for local traffic exchange and a robust Interconnect Exchange.

[Feature Image Credit]

Speaking at the event, Oluwasayo Oshadami, GM Technical Solutions at MainOne, examined the internet landscape in Africa and the current state of broadband connectivity on the Continent.

Oshadami noted that “Africa needs to retain more of its local traffic within the continent by leveraging Data Centers to directly interconnect operators and exchange traffic at lower bandwidth costs, lower latency and improved efficiency.’’

Highlight of the event was the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding between AMS-IX, one of the largest Internet Exchange operators in the world, and MDXi, MainOne’s Data Center subsidiary and an Equinix Company, to grow Internet Exchange services in Africa.

This strategic partnership between AMS-IX and MDXi, an Equinix company will deliver improved interconnection capabilities for existing and new customers, further facilitating the distribution of content across the West African region.

The event ended with the announcement of MainOne as host of the 12^th edition of AfPIF to take place in Accra, Ghana in 2023 following a successful bid process.

The African Peering and Interconnection Forum (AfPIF) is an annual event organized by the African IXP Association (AFIX) in partnership with the Internet Society.

AfPIF by MainOne is a multi-stakeholder forum that aims to address key opportunities and challenges related network interconnection within the region in order to expand and develop the African Internet.