Africa’s Online Access: What Data Is Getting Accessed and Where It Is Hosted?

Abstract

Recent studies have shown that most of the web traffic going from one African country to another has to transit through ISP’s in other continents before coming back to Africa. This phenomenon is known as boomerang routing and proposals are being made on how to correct it. However, there is a more fundamental question that needs to be addressed: what web content is of interest to Africans and where is it hosted? Indeed, if most of the data needed by Africans is within the continent and yet boomerang is still prevalent, then correcting it is of paramount importance. If, on the other hand, most the data accessed by Africans is hosted outside the continent, then data repatriation might be more beneficial than boomerang correction. By using publicly available data, this paper attempts to shed some light to that question. Our study suggests that locally producing content and locally hosting it should be given priority to correcting boomerang. The data used as well as the analytical process that have led to such a conclusion are presented in the sequel.