[Community] Fwd: [AfricaConnect] Maputo AFPIF 2015 & Beijing Athletics 2015

[Omo Oaiya]

FYI,

-------- Forwarded Message --------
Subject: [AfricaConnect] Maputo AFPIF 2015 & Beijing Athletics 2015
Date: Sun, 30 Aug 2015 20:22:11 +0300 (EAT)
From: Meoli Kashorda <mkashorda at kenet.or.ke>
To: afpif at afpif.org, africaconnect at lists.ubuntunet.net
CC: Walubengo J <jwalu at yahoo.com>, office <office at kenet.or.ke>,
mb at kenet.or.ke

Dear colleagues,

The 6th AFPIF 2015 this past week in Maputo was the biggest (232
participants?) and most exciting forum that I have attended so far (I
have attend 5 of 6 AFPIFs). See
https://www.internetsociety.org/afpif-2015/home). Niger NREN and WACREN
were represented by Musa Tessa of Niger, MoreNET by the CEO Salvador
Adriano and KENET and UbuntuNet Alliance were represented by myself and
Hillary Cheserek. See #AFPIF2015 for more details. Meeting people who
are building Internet infrastructures in Africa was exciting.

East Africa seems to have made a lot of progress in Africa in the past
12 months. KOOBA (http://www.koobaafrica.com/data-centres) announced
that they were building a 2MW data center in Mombasa that will be
operational end of Q1 2016 (it will grow to 6 MW) at a cost of $25
million. Icolo.io (www.icolo.io) another data center company in Kenya
was building yet another 2 MW data center at Catholic University of
Eastern Africa (the host of IBM Africa research lab) that will be
operational Q3 2016. These are all carrier neutral data centers of same
size as the East African Data Center, classified as the first
carrier-neutral data center in Kenya. I think they are targeting the
East African region countries that are growing their broadcasting/video,
sports, educational and government content that will require large
carrier-neutral data centers.

Cloudfare (https://www.cloudflare.com/features-cdn), one of the leading
global CDNs now has a presence in Mombasa at Seacom CLS. This was all
exciting news and was one of the benefits of attending AFPIF 2015 (quite
apart from visiting beautiful and growing Maputo). It means that NRENs
and universities in EA might not need to invest in expensive data
centers - we can focus on our missions!

I also learned that Angola Cables were building an undersea fiber cable
from Angola and Brazil, 6000 KM, without a consortium or external
funding (talk about the wealth in Africa). That will give Africa an
alternative route to North America, the source of most of our content.
It will be ready in 2016!

The issue of locally relevant content was also discussed. It is clear
that sports news is classified as locally relevant content, even when
generated in Europe or China.  One of the TV stations in Kenya ranks the
top 10 Google searches by Kenyans every Sunday and sports are always
among the top 10. I believe the Beijing Athletics 2015 championships
that were taking place in China in the week we were at AFPIF 2015 will
be in the top Google search in Kenya (see
http://www.iaafbeijing2015.com/en/).

Kenya and Ethiopia were among the top 10 global medal finalists, with
Kenya at the top with 7 Gold medals beating the usual suspects of
Jamaica, US and other developed countries with the highest number of
medals. And there was another Internet story - Julius Yego who got Gold
in Javelin is reported to have used YouTube video to learn the sport (he
is only 25). He did not even have broadband Internet three years ago -
only 3G Internet (download videos and watch later).

So we had a good week in Maputo and in Beijing online - the conference
had a 1 Gb/s Internet supplied by SEACOM, so we could stream whatever we
wanted. This is now going to be the minimum for African conferences!

Congratulations to Eduardo Mondlane University (our local host
university in Maputo and member of MoRENET) and Internet Society the
organizers. The next one in 2016 shall be Dar es Salaam, Tanzania,
another East African country with highest number of neighboring
countries in EA.

I cannot wait to learn about the Internet developments of the next 12
months at AFPIF 2016. We have so much potential for growth in Africa!

Kind regards

Meoli Kashorda
KENET
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