South Africa is the continent’s internet connection point

• Internet exchange point NAPAfrica says it recently hit a peak traffic of 5Tbps, showing the internet usage explosion across the continent.
• NAPAfrica is hosted by South African firm Teraco, which has eight data centres in country serving the continent.
• Usage is expected to continue increasing as internet usage balloons through mobile phone adoption.

One of Africa’s largest internet exchange points, NAPAfrica says it has recently surpassed five terabits per second of peak traffic, denoting the enormous explosion in internet usage across the African country.

More significantly, being located in South Africa, NAPAfrica says that the internet milestone “solidifies South Africa’s role as the continent’s primary digital connection point.”

Hosted by data centre firm Teraco, NAPAfrica says it is the first African internet exchange point to introduce 400Gbps interconnects, increasing smoothness for user experiencing. It has han 656 unique networks (ASNs) spanning 50 countries and a total connected capacity of 41.5Tbps.

In March, NAPAfrica said that the rise in internet traffic can be attributed to African companies and countries investing in connectivity technologies.

“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,” explained NAPAfrica at the time.

Teraco operates eight data centres across the country, including five in Johannesburg. It also manages two facilities in Cape Town and one in Durban.

“These facilities underscore Teraco’s commitment to supporting digital transformation by providing scalable, secure, and interconnected infrastructure solutions to enterprises and cloud providers across the region,” the company said.

As of February, Teraco began looking at renewable energy for its data centres, which are enormous hogs of electricity and water. It signed an agreement with NOA, a local integrated energy aggregator for a steady supply of wind energy to its facilities.

“By aggregating renewable energy from our fleet of generation facilities and third party IPPs, we are well positioned to provide tailored and flexible solutions to help companies, like Teraco, reduce their carbon footprint,” chief executive officer of NOA, Karel Cornelissen said in a statement earlier this year.

The traffic is expected to continue increasing as Africans continuously adopt internet usage through the unchecked rise of the smartphone.

Recent surveys in South Africa show has mobile use is increasing, alongside access to the internet. Nearly all South African home now have access to mobile phones (96.1 percent, according to a 2025 StatsSA survey).

“As mobile and broadband adoption soars – fuelled by cloud, AI, streaming, and gaming – Teraco and NAPAfrica are doubling down on capacity, reach, and neutrality. Expect continued facility expansions, more regional cache nodes to reduce last-mile distance, and new 400Gbps participants, and ever-higher peak traffic records,” the company says.