Djibouti Data Center (DDC), set up by a group of local and international investors 18 months ago, is the first data centre and Internet exchange in east Africa connected to eight fibre optic cables that are part of the main Internet route from Europe to Asia.
The Internet route travels through the Mediterranean, Red Sea and into the Indian Ocean, passing by tiny Djibouti, which is sandwiched between Eritrea, Somalia and Ethiopia.
African Internet users have typically enjoyed little benefit from these cables passing along its coast because connectivity to them has been
limited, something DDC aims to correct as it plans to expand from its home base into Kenya, Ethiopia, South Sudan, and Somalia, which are all at varying stages of Internet development.
"The Djibouti market itself may be small, but the DDC serves as a unique gateway hub to the many millions of customers in these neighbouring east Africa countries," said Anthony Voscarides, chief executive of Djibouti Data Center.
The company launched services in March 2013 in partnership with Djibouti Telecom and will connect to at least three more cables on the
Europe/Asia route next year.
"Africa has historically been challenged by high Internet costs," Voscarides, an Australian former telecoms industry executive, said.
According to The Internet Society, 15.7 percent of Kenya's average GDP per capita is required for broadband access, compared to 6.1 percent in South Africa and less than 2 percent in most of Europe.
In Ethiopia the figure rises to 60.4 percent while in Uganda it is 31 percent in Uganda and 7.4 percent in Sudan.
Less than 2 percent of Ethiopia's 97 million population use the Internet. But Sydney-based consultants BuddeComm, in a report published
last month, said the country's "broadband market is set for a boom following massive improvements in international bandwidth, national
fibre backbone infrastructure and 3G mobile broadband services."
Kenya is the biggest market in the region with Internet penetration of 39 percent, the fourth-highest in Africa, according to the International
Telecommunications Union.
In terms of median download speeds, however, Kenya is ranked 105th globally, while Ethiopia is 94th, Sudan 154th and South Africa is 116th, according to the Internet Society. Madagascar is the highest ranked African country at 61.
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