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In this case study we look at the current state of Internet access for Africa as measured by the PingER project and also at the effect of the new submarine cable connections on the Round Trip Times (RTT) to countries of Africa as seen from SLAC near San Francisco. PingER monitors over 165 sites in 50 countries, that contain about 99% of Africa's population. The African countries that are not currently monitored are Chad, Comoros, Equatorial Guinea, Sao Tome & Principe and Western Sahara. The results from PingER are used heavily in this study. Below is seen a map of the PingER sites in Africa. The red dots indicate PinGER monitoring sites, the blue are beacon sites that are monitored by all most of the over 40 PingER monitoring sites around the world, and the green are other sites monitored by at least one monitoring site.

Current State

The throughputs measured to Africa from N. America for the last decade are shown below in the left hand figure. It is seen that not only do African sites lag the rest of the world in throughput ,being roughly in the state that European sites were over a decade and a half ago, but also they are falling further behind withy time. Further, bear in mind that for Africa, Mediterranean countries and South Africa have the better perfomance and E. Africa is the worst off (see the the middle left map).  Thus the arrival of a terrestrial submarine fibre cable link to the rest of the world for E. Africa is a very significant development.

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