November 5, 2018

Cloudflare consolidates African presence with Lagos data center

The data center seeks to provide safe internet usage to entities in Nigeria by leveraging interconnectivity with undersea cable operators in the country.

data center

Cloudflare have entered into the region of Lagos, Nigeria with their 155th data center globally. With this lauch, Cloudflare seeks to provide safe and reliable internet services by leveraging undersea routes that are connected to the local Internet Exchange (IXPN) as well as the newly announced WAF-IX Lagos (West African Exchange).

According to Cloudflare, Nigeria is gradually becoming a mobile-first economy with internet usage at an all-time high. They claim that mobile and internet usage has led to a rise in the adoption of smartphones in the country.

By unveiling their 155th data center in Nigeria, Cloudflare believe that they will fortify their network in Africa and provide free-flowing services from Lagos City instead of routing the network via London. They further added that this service will also boost the telecom industry across Africa and allow enterprises to scale quickly and safely.

Cloudflare say that Lagos has a well-established undersea network that covers a vast stretch from Northern Europe to the Southern tip of Africa. They claim that some of these networks that flow through Lagos, are ACE (Africa Coast to Europe), MainOne, Glo-1 (and Glo-2), NCSCS (Nigeria Cameroon Submarine Cable System), WACS (West African Cable System) etc.

The CDN provider says that they are consistently witnessing over 4% to 7% increase in month-on-month traffic in Africa. Speaking about the launch, Martin J.Levy, Network Strategist at Cloudflare, commented:

When we look at the Alexa-top-50 list for Nigerian users we find that 18 of those sites are Cloudflare customers. That means an instant win for both consumers (those smartphone users) and the website or app, operators.

Of the remaining 32 sites, 15 are owned by massive content players (search, online video, social media, operating systems or phones) and of the remaining 17 sites (Wikipedia being one of highest visited on that list); they are mainly non-CDN’ed websites that are hosted outside the country (Europe or USA).

In closing, Cloudflare said that they are planning to set up new hubs at Senegal, Ivory Coast and Ghana in the coming months. Looks like the CDN provider is going all guns blazing with Africa consolidation, following the launch of data centers in South Africa and Mauritius early this year in March.