Annual event serves as a platform to expand and develop the Internet in Africa.

Rwanda is for the first time hosting this year’s Africa Peering and Interconnection Forum (AfPIF) in Kigali.

The forum is organized by the Internet Society (ISOC) and the African IXP Association (AFIX) in collaboration with the Rwanda Internet Community and Technology Alliance (RICTA). Running from 23 to 25 August at the Marriott Hotel, the event has convened stakeholders from across the continent and globally including Meta, Google, Liquid Intelligent Technologies, Microsoft, the Internet Initiative Japan Lab, and Africa Data Centers, among others.

The annual event, now in its 11th edition, serves as a platform to expand and develop the African Internet. It connects infrastructure, service, and content providers to identify ways to improve network interconnection, lower the cost of connectivity, and increase the Internet’s resiliency and experience for local users.

It also provides participants with global and regional insights for maximizing opportunities to help grow Internet infrastructure and services in Africa.

AfPIF was created to address the fact that most of Africa’s local Internet traffic is exchanged outside the continent. Exchanging traffic locally through Internet exchange points (IXPs) reduces Internet access costs and network delays and increases content access speeds.

IXPs are technical infrastructures that enable a faster, cheaper, and more reliable Internet experience by bringing multiple networks from the private, public, and educational sectors together to connect and exchange Internet traffic.

Instead of using expensive international transit routes, Internet traffic is exchanged locally and access speeds for content can be up to 10 times faster as result.

This year’s AfPIF focuses on Internet interconnection dynamics, content distribution, and transit obstacles at local and regional levels. The Kigali forum marks a return to in-person meetings since AfPIF’s postponement in 2020 due to the COVID-19 global pandemic.

AE News