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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 shows the state of African NRENs in 2008 .and to the right of it the Founding Ubuntuntunet Alliance members and those who have joined since

Below on the left are the routes taken from South Africa to other African countries in September 2005 and August 2009 and on the right the routes from Burkina Faso to other African countries in August 2009.

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