Communication across Africa, whether between one country and another or within nations themselves, has for years been beset by significant logistical difficulties. Communication in this context encompasses both physical and electronic exchanges, vital for economic, social, and political interaction. Yet, even in the present day, the connections linking African countries remain fragile and often inadequate, hampering efficient dialogue and movement across the continent.
A few years ago, a colleague’s attempt to travel to Bangui, the capital of the Central African Republic—a former French colony—offered a stark example of this inefficiency. Instead of a straightforward African itinerary, the best booking available required an initial detour to Paris before returning to Africa’s interior. Such convoluted routing remains a poignant illustration of Africa’s infrastructural challenges.
In the era before emails dominated communication, fax machines were the primary tool for exchanging messages. However, even then, sending a fax between African countries was rarely straightforward. Not infrequently, these faxes were routed via European capitals, a cumbersome and inefficient roundabout to connect African correspondents.
About sixty years ago, my son, then residing in Lilongwe, journeyed to Arusha, Tanzania, to attend an ICT conference. The route presented to him—a stopover through Nampula in Mozambique, Nairobi in Kenya, Dar es Salaam in Tanzania, before finally reaching Arusha—meant he covered more than double the direct distance. While the straight-line distance between Lilongwe and Arusha via Dar es Salaam is around 1,470 kilometres, his journey totalled 3,316 kilometres, highlighting the absurdity that sometimes plagues intra-African travel.
Some months later, an American Christian publisher keen to visit Malawi and several other African countries faced a similar travel quandary. Unable to secure a direct flight from Harare to Blantyre, he was advised to fly from Harare to Addis Ababa, spend two days there, then continue to Blantyre. The complexity led him to cancel that leg of his journey altogether.
This tangled web extends into internet connectivity as well. Consider a resident of Blantyre sending an email to a colleague, perhaps in the next room—or even the same room—the message often first journeys through servers abroad in Europe or America before arriving locally. This inefficient routing is characteristic of an outdated system that serves neither speed nor cost efficiency.
Accessing a local company’s website can require connecting through servers scattered across continents before the webpage reaches one’s computer. Such inefficiency not only hampers user experience but also inflates costs, contributing to Africa’s persistently low internet penetration levels.
It is within this challenging context that Internet Exchange Points (IXPs) offer a beacon of hope. An IXP is a physical network access point where multiple network providers interconnect to exchange internet traffic locally. Without IXPs, data exchanges between local networks typically detour through costly third-party networks often located on distant continents, adding latency—that is, delay—and expense to data flows. IXPs reduce both the cost of data transfer and latency, enhancing internet performance.
Currently, there are 63 IXPs spread across 48 cities in 38 African countries. Their presence dramatically improves internet accessibility by keeping local traffic within the continent, often within the same city, avoiding unnecessary international detours. Malawi has two IXPs. One is the Malawi Internet Exchange (MIX), housed at the College of Medicine. This connects multiple local networks, a positive step towards improving national digital infrastructure. The second, a recently launched one, is the Lilongwe Open Neutral Exchange Point (LIONEX), which provides a neutral platform for ISPs and network operators to exchange traffic locally.
Underlying many of these logistical difficulties is Africa’s historical dependence on Europe and America for its communication networks. These infrastructures were initially developed by former colonial powers to serve their interests, not those of the African continent.
As Africans, the imperative is to develop and deploy solutions crafted within and for our context. While IXPs represent a significant advance, they are but one element in what should be a broader strategy to enhance connectivity and communication across Africa.
For instance, the American visitor’s inability to book a direct flight from Harare to Blantyre might not arise from an absence of airlines servicing the route but rather from insufficient visibility of available operators. Enhancing the visibility of African carriers internationally through well-designed marketing and consultation with local experts could remedy such inconveniences.
Beyond the anecdotes, the broader challenges of communications infrastructure across Africa remain daunting. According to recent reports, Africa faces a vast digital infrastructure financing gap estimated at tens of billions of dollars yearly to meet its growing needs. This includes the need for hundreds of thousands of new 4G base stations and extensive fibre-optic networks to enhance terrestrial connectivity, particularly in rural and remote areas.