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East Africa contains 300M people, yet less than 3% are Internet users (see Internet usage for Africa). In the past the area has had poor Internet connectivity with mainly geostationary satellite connections to the outside world. In addition most of the traffic between countries made use of expensive international links via Europe and the U.S. rather than more direct connections. There are active movements to create National Research and Education Networks (NRENs) in the area, see for example "Sub-Saharan Africa: An update" by Boubaker Barry. This,  together with direct connections between countries will enable more direct peering. These NRENs in turn are peering with the GEANT network in Europe through the Ubuntunet Alliance. The map below on the left shows the state of African NRENs in 2008. In the middle can be seen how the routes traffic

Below on the left are the routes taken from South Africa takes to get to other African Countries countries in September 2005 . On and August 2009 and on the right can be the routes from Burkina Faso to other Africa African countries measured in August 2009.

It can be seen that NRENs are being created. In September 2005 most traffic from South Africa to the rest of Africa took costly international links, only Botswana and Zimbabwe had direct routes. More details on the routes to African countries from several measurement points around the world measured in Spring 2009 can be seen in a spreadsheet of African routing and inferences.

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