Internet

OAfabric introduces a powerful, scalable interconnection solution to drive digital transformation and investment across Africa’s growing markets. (Image source: Open Access Data Centres)

Open Access Data Centres (OADC), Africa’s fastest-expanding data centre provider, has announced the launch of Open Access Fabric (OAfabric)—a collaborative, open-access digital platform set to revolutionise African interconnection

Scheduled to debut in January 2025 in Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), OAfabric will extend across Africa and eventually reach global markets, establishing critical interconnection hubs. These hubs will meet the increasing demand for sophisticated interconnection services, empowering businesses, and reinforcing Africa’s role in the global digital economy.

OAfabric will reduce costs, boost performance, support the growth of local enterprises, and attract additional global investment, propelling Africa’s digital transformation forward.

Redefining Africa's connectivity

With the support of WIOCC Group’s extensive infrastructure and connectivity expertise, OAfabric will enhance client access to diverse internet ecosystems, integrating prominent African Internet eXchange Points (IXPs), local and international content providers, and enabling seamless cloud operator integration. This platform will also facilitate essential site-to-site and user-to-user connections, offering a game-changing solution for African businesses and global companies looking to expand into the region.

“OAfabric is engineered to address the growing demand for advanced interconnection services across Africa by providing a single, reliable, truly scalable and unmatched multi-service interconnection solution,” said Obinna Adumike, head of converged digital infrastructure for OADC. “This is the future of Africa’s digital infrastructure, designed to drive down costs, enhance performance and enable local enterprises to grow and thrive, while also attracting global investment that will further accelerate digital transformation across the continent.”

Initially hosted in OADC’s colocation data centres, OAfabric will offer a comprehensive suite of services, including IX peering, virtual interconnection, future IP services, and direct, dedicated private cloud access. Clients will gain access to premium connectivity services spanning various provider networks, delivering reliable, flexible, and fully scalable solutions tailored to meet the unique needs of African digital enterprises. OAfabric will also enable seamless cloud access, allowing direct connections to public cloud on-ramps, with a framework that supports data sovereignty and promotes the growth of local providers, creating a robust, self-reliant digital infrastructure in Africa.

Poised to scale in line with the evolving demands of the African market, OAfabric provides a versatile interconnection platform capable of supporting hybrid colocation architectures. This positions OAfabric as a cornerstone of Africa’s digital transformation, offering future-ready hybrid infrastructures for both African businesses and global providers looking to establish a presence on the continent, addressing Africa’s interconnection challenges directly.

“OAfabric is about establishing vibrant, open-access interconnection ecosystems underpinned by connectivity within an open-access platform that empowers local innovation and growth,” added Adumike. “We’re building the digital future of Africa, and OAfabric will be a key enabler of this transformation.”

TechAccess, a leading ICT services and solutions provider, has announced its new partnership with Siemon, a leader in high-quality IT infrastructure solutions, to enhance South Africa's IT infrastructure with advanced, high-performance solutions tailored for local businesses and data centre needs

Through this collaboration, TechAccess will serve as Siemon’s value-added reseller for South Africa, offering Siemon’s advanced passive IT network infrastructure solutions to businesses across the region.

Focused on the data centre industry, TechAccess has built a reputation for delivering comprehensive solutions by utilizing the latest technological innovations. This partnership aligns with TechAccess’ goal of helping clients navigate the complex world of data centres and enterprise IT infrastructure, providing solutions that address both current and future needs.

"This partnership marks a significant step in expanding our offerings to the Southern African market,” said Jaxon Martin, managing director of TechAccess. "By collaborating with Siemon, we can deliver a broader range of high-performance solutions tailored to the unique needs of our clients, particularly in areas such as data centre fit-out infrastructure, advanced structured cabling, smart building IT infrastructure, and data centre infrastructure design and management."

Siemon’s century of innovation

Founded in 1903, Siemon has been a pioneer in the IT infrastructure industry. With its headquarters in the United States, Siemon has a global presence, offering an extensive range of copper and fibre cabling systems, cabinets, cable management, data centre design services, and automated infrastructure management for data centres, LANs, and smart buildings.

"We are excited to partner with TechAccess to bring our innovative solutions to the South African market," said Prem Rodrigues, vice-president of sales and marketing - IMEA, Siemon. "This collaboration will allow local businesses to access Siemon’s globally recognised expertise in high-performance IT infrastructure, with TechAccess providing local support and consultation to ensure clients achieve the best possible outcomes for their data centre needs."

Expanding access to solution

These offerings will help South African businesses enhance their IT operations, improve infrastructure management, and prepare for future technological advancements such as AI, IoT, hyperscale, and cloud computing.

Siemon’s global leadership

Siemon remains a leader in technological innovation, holding over 400 active patents in structured cabling. With products trusted by global companies like NASA, IBM, Amazon, and HSBC, Siemon maintains a strong reputation for quality and sustainability. Their ISO 9001 and ISO 14001-certified manufacturing facilities emphasize continuous improvement, ensuring top-tier standards for every product. In 2023, Siemon earned a Gold Rating from EcoVadis for its Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) practices, ranking among the top 5% of over 100,000 companies worldwide.

NAPAfrica, Africa's premier Internet Exchange Point (IXP) and the world’s seventh-largest, has achieved a major milestone, reaching 4.5 Tbps of traffic as its peering community steadily grows

Recent additions to its roster—including Mimecast, Fortinet, and Tencent—join established members such as Akamai, Amazon, Apple, ByteDance (TikTok), CDN77, Cloudflare, Facebook (Meta), Google, Microsoft, and Netflix, further solidifying NAPAfrica’s status as a vital hub for Africa’s digital infrastructure.

Over the past year, NAPAfrica’s peering community has expanded by more than 40 new members, totaling 652 unique organizations. Headquartered within Teraco’s data centers in Cape Town, Durban, and Johannesburg, NAPAfrica provides essential peering support for internet operators across Africa. Crossing the 4 Tbps traffic milestone in November 2023, the exchange continues to support a robust and diverse network of local and global peers.

Peering's role in African digital growth

“This ongoing growth is a testament to Africa’s vibrant internet community, which has embraced peering, data-intensive applications, cloud adoption, and the rising demand for video, content, and gaming services,” stated Andrew Owens, Interconnection and Peering Lead at Teraco.

“Higher traffic levels between cloud providers, enterprises, and end users highlight how essential peering is in accelerating digital transformation across the continent. Our mission is to equip our clients with a seamless, reliable infrastructure to serve their communities effectively across Africa,” added Owens.

Peering has been instrumental in this success, providing a cost-effective, high-performance method for content providers and businesses to deliver content to end users. By directly connecting with other networks, NAPAfrica members enjoy reduced latency, quicker content delivery, and notable cost savings—key benefits as demand for cloud and entertainment services in Africa surges.

400 Gbps interconnection options

In response to growing traffic, NAPAfrica has enhanced its offerings by becoming the first Internet Exchange in Africa to introduce 400 Gbps interconnection options, addressing the demands of large content and cloud service providers.

Enhanced network visibility with kentik

NAPAfrica is further empowering its members through the Kentik Network Observability platform, a cutting-edge tool that offers valuable insights into network performance. Kentik allows peering managers, network engineers, and security teams to better manage traffic, optimise performance, and anticipate capacity needs, ultimately improving content delivery and bolstering network resilience.

Expanding regional caching

To improve local content delivery, NAPAfrica is now hosting regional cache servers, including Netflix Open Connect cache servers in Cape Town and Durban. By minimising the distance data must travel, these servers offer faster load times for local audiences and make the exchange even more appealing to new members.

Driving Africa’s digital transformation

As international cloud providers and enterprises ramp up their presence in Africa, NAPAfrica is supporting these ambitions. Michele McCann, Head of Platforms at Teraco, highlights, “The presence of hundreds of carriers and networks, key content providers and cloud services underscores a vibrant peering community that drives affordable, effective content distribution, enabling businesses to meet rising demands for cloud-based and entertainment services.”

With essential infrastructure in place, NAPAfrica is paving the way for Africa’s digital future, serving as the backbone of internet services and cloud adoption. This partnership-driven model ensures that organizations can advance internet communications, cloud strategies, and connectivity, meeting Africa’s escalating demand for digital services.

This strategically designed route enhances Paratus’ regional infrastructure, providing exceptional reliability and low-latency connectivity across Southern Africa. (Image source: Paratus)

Paratus Group, a leading pan-African telecom company, has finalised its East-West Africa fiber route, delivering a fast and resilient connection from anywhere in southern Africa to anywhere globally

This first-of-its-kind coast-to-coast terrestrial route, developed using Paratus’ fiber infrastructure, provides a vital alternative link. Growing demand for this route has accelerated, driven by frequent and disruptive network outages.

Paratus Group CEO, Schalk Erasmus, explained, “This sea-change in imperatives has arisen due to breakages in certain subsea cable systems. Operators need a more reliable route and, with our new East-West route, by connecting to the Equiano subsea cable, we can assure customers a fast and robust alternative. Our East-West fiber route isn’t just a line on a map — it’s Africa’s digital lifeline.”

Stretching from Maputo on Africa’s east coast, through Johannesburg and across Botswana and Namibia, the advanced terrestrial network reaches the Cable Landing Station in Swakopmund, Namibia, where Paratus is the Equiano Subsea Cable landing partner. This strategically designed route enhances Paratus’ regional infrastructure, providing exceptional reliability and low-latency connectivity across Southern Africa.

Paratus Group chief commercial officer, Martin Cox, highlights the network's unique blend of regional expertise and global access: “As a steadfast partner with pan-African expertise, we offer unequalled wholesale capacity solutions for network operators. Because we understand the unique connectivity needs of the various regions, we have tailored our solutions to specific requirements, and we offer carriers and operators not only a diverse East-West route but also onward transmission to Europe.

“Recent undersea cable cuts have shown the importance of robust alternatives and why we’ve built redundancy into every kilometre, ensuring Southern Africa stays connected, no matter what. This isn’t just about backup—it’s about uninterrupted operations and seamless communications. With Paratus, you’re partnering with innovators who are weaving resilience into Africa’s digital landscape.”