11 Feb 2014

February 3 saw the Southern African Development Community (SADC) in partnership with the African Union Commission (AUC) kick off a five-day regional workshop on best practices and benefits of setting up Regional Internet Exchange Points (RIXPs) and Regional Internet Carriers (RICs).

According to a press release from BOCRA, the workshop took place in Gaborone and attracted more than 100 delegates comprising of representatives of 14 SADC member states, AUC, SADC Secretariat, and SADC Regional Implementing Agencies.

Speaking on behalf of the Minister of Transport and Communications, Mr Cecil Masiga, the director of telecommunications and postal services said, “this regional workshop marks an important occasion where AU and SADC have made a collaborative effort to share ideas and experiences with us on best practices and benefits of setting up Regional Internet Exchange Points and Regional Internet Carrier to build capacity.”

The release stated that the workshop was part of an ongoing mobilisation and technical awareness process to support the establishment of Internet Exchange Points in AU member states as part of the African Internet Exchange System project.

It further explained that the workshop was hosted by the Botswana Government in conjunction with the Botswana Communications Regulatory Authority (BOCRA) as part of the African Internet Exchange System (AXIS) project.

It also said the project had the objective of keeping Africa’s internet traffic local (continentally) by providing capacity building and technical assistance to facilitate the establishment of National Internet Exchange Points (NIXPs) and RIXPs in Africa.

It also aimed to assist in the development of a more locally operated, more robust and economically accessible pan-African Internet and drawing on the advantages of affordability, low latency and bandwidth-saving.

 The release says that Mr Moctar Yedaly, AUC Head of Information Society said, “The renaissance and transformation of Africa by ICT has started, but Africa is currently paying overseas carriers to exchange local intra-continental traffic on our behalf. This is both a costly as well as an inefficient way of handling intra –continental exchange of internal traffic.

Increasing efficiency of national & regional traffic is an area that has thus far not been addressed, resulting in a slow and expensive exchange of African inter-country traffic via overseas hubs located mainly in the USA and Europe. This why the African Union organs adopted decisions related to the development of African Internet Exchange System (AXIS).

”In conclusion, Mr Masiga said, ‘I would like to acknowledge that we have challenges that we face to achieve regional interconnectivity. As a region we need to come up with common strategies of how we can effectively deal with these issues. I would therefore, like to thank SADC for organising this important workshop where we can finally debate how we can improve costs, latency, and bandwidth utilisation for routing internet traffic. Ends