The NAPAfrica Internet Exchange has reached a new milestone of 5Tbps of traffic.
NAPAfrica remains Africa’s fastest-growing Internet Exchange Point (IXP) and one of the global top 10 internet exchanges by total traffic volume.
With more than 655 networks peering at its exchange points, NAPAfrica continues to play a critical role in keeping African Internet traffic local, reducing costs, and improving network performance.
Key traffic milestones in NAPAfrica’s growth:
2016: Traffic peaked at 100Gbps.
2018: Traffic peaked at 500Gbps.
2021: Traffic surged to 2Tbps.
2023: Traffic surpassed the 4Tbps mark.
February 2025: Traffic reached 5Tbps.
Some NAPAfrica statistics:
Physical connected ports: 2 244
Total connected capacity: 41.5Tbits
10 factors driving NAPAfrica’s growth:
- Strategic locations in South Africa – NAPAfrica operates in Johannesburg, Cape Town, and Durban, three of Africa’s key internet traffic hubs. In these locations, NAPAfrica serves as a critical interconnection point for regional and international networks.
- Teraco data centres – NAPAfrica is physically hosted within Teraco data centres, Africa’s largest carrier- and vendor-neutral data centre operator. Teraco facilitates direct interconnections with over 655 networks, including major ISPs, CDNs, cloud providers, and enterprises, offering a seamless and cost-effective peering experience.
- Presence of major content and cloud providers – The exchange attracts global technology leaders such as Akamai, Amazon, Cloudflare, Google, Meta, Microsoft, and Netflix, enabling direct content delivery and cloud access in Africa. Teraco and NAPAfrica have invested in additional cache servers to cover regional connectivity requirements, including hosting Netflix Open Connect in Cape Town and Durban. By reducing the distance data must travel, this initiative enables faster load times for local audiences, enriching the user experience while making participation even more attractive for new members.
- Free peering and cost efficiency – Unlike many global IXPs, which charge for port access, NAPAfrica offers free peering. This enables ISPs, content providers, and enterprises to lower transit costs while improving network performance.
- Expansion of the peering community – Over the past year, NAPAfrica has added more than 40 new peers, including prominent companies like Mimecast, Fortinet, and Tencent, enhancing its peering ecosystem and increasing traffic exchange efficiency.
- Introduction of 400Gbps interconnection options – In a first for Africa, NAPAfrica now offers 400Gbps interconnects, accommodating the growing bandwidth demands of content and cloud providers.
- Growth of local and regional networks – Most of Africa’s internet traffic was traditionally routed through Europe, increasing latency and costs. NAPAfrica has helped keep African traffic within the continent, leading to improved performance for ISPs, mobile operators, and enterprises, while fostering a more self-sufficient African internet ecosystem.
- Subsea cable connectivity boost – South Africa’s strategic position as a landing point for subsea cables like 2Africa, ACE, EASSy, Equiano, METISS, SAT3/SAFE, Seacom, , and WACS has bolstered international connectivity. Networks across Southern, East, and West Africa peer at NAPAfrica to access global content efficiently.
- Growth in mobile and broadband internet usage – With Africa experiencing exponential growth in mobile internet and fibre broadband penetration, ISPs and mobile operators increasingly rely on NAPAfrica to support demand for video streaming, gaming, and cloud services.
- Enhanced network visibility and performance optimisation – NAPAfrica’s adoption of the Kentik Network Observability platform provides peering members with critical network insights, allowing them to optimise traffic flows, detect anomalies, and enhance performance.