Africa’s internet story is usually told through visible infrastructure: new subsea cables, more terrestrial fiber, expanding data centers, Internet Exchange Points, cloud points of presence and rising broadband adoption. By those measures, the continent has made significant progress. But beneath that infrastructure build-out is a less visible problem: too few African networks are independently identifiable in the global routing system.
At the West Africa Peering Forum, in Cotonou, Benin last week, the issue was framed around a stark number. Africa has roughly 2,800 assigned Autonomous System Numbers, or ASNs, representing only about 2.2% of globally assigned ASNs. The figure is striking because ASNs are not simply technical labels. They are the routing identities that allow networks to be recognised, reached and interconnected across the internet.
As Temitope Osunrinde, Executive Director, Africa Hyperscalers, put it during the session, ASNs are “identity numbers for networks online.” They allow networks “to be recognised, reached and routed across the internet.” Yet in Africa, ASN adoption remains concentrated among ISPs and infrastructure companies, while many banks, universities, enterprises, government platforms and other major traffic-generating institutions still rely heavily on upstream providers for routing, visibility and redundancy.
That matters because Africa’s digital infrastructure has grown faster than its routing independence. The continent now has about 60 subsea cables, 145 cable landing points, 1.4 million to 1.5 million kilometres of fiber, roughly 150 CDN and cloud points of presence, and about 600MW of live data center IT capacity, according to figures cited during the panel. But the number of independently visible networks remains small.
The result is an internet ecosystem where demand exists, but much of it is hidden behind a relatively small number of routing identities.
An ASN, according to AFRINIC, is a globally unique identifier for a group of IP prefixes operated under a single routing policy. It allows autonomous systems to exchange routing information with one another. Regional Internet Registries, including AFRINIC, APNIC, ARIN, LACNIC and RIPE NCC, manage and register internet number resources, including IPv4, IPv6 and ASNs, within their respective regions.
In practice, ASNs are what make networks visible participants in the internet’s routing economy. A bank with its own ASN can manage how traffic reaches its systems, connect to multiple providers, peer at an exchange point and improve resilience. A university with its own ASN can make its network visible to caches, research networks and local interconnection partners. A data center market with more ASNs looks deeper and more attractive to CDNs, cloud providers and edge platforms.
Without them, networks may still be online, but they are often hidden behind someone else’s routing identity.
That was one of the central concerns raised by Behu Abba Bryce, Stakeholder Development Manager at AFRINIC. He argued that Africa’s low ASN adoption reflects the structure of the continent’s internet market. Many countries developed around a small number of large operators, leaving large populations served by only a few independently visible networks. In some markets, banks, universities and enterprises still prefer to obtain connectivity through ISPs instead of managing their own number resources.
Bryce also pointed to a more basic problem: awareness. Many organisations do not know they can approach AFRINIC directly for IPv4, IPv6 or ASN resources. Others lack the technical capacity, routing expertise or internal justification to manage those resources. Some are discouraged by the misconception that using private addresses or hiding behind NAT makes them inherently safer. He described this as a myth that continues to limit enterprise network maturity.
The security myth is particularly damaging. It frames public addressing and independent routing as exposure, rather than as a controlled, auditable and professionally managed part of network operations. In many African enterprises, the instinct remains to hide behind an upstream provider. That may simplify operations in the short term, but it also reduces control, resilience and visibility.
Ghislain Nkeramugaba, IXP Development Expert at the Internet Society, widened the diagnosis. Low ASN density, he argued, is not only a networking issue. It reflects the maturity of the wider digital economy: how many enterprises are digitised, how much public service delivery has moved online, how much digital demand exists, and whether power, broadband coverage and purchasing power are strong enough to support digital services at scale.
That is an important point. ASN adoption does not grow in isolation. It follows digital depth. If banks, universities, supermarkets, logistics firms, hospitals, tax agencies and government platforms are not building significant digital services, there is less pressure to operate independent networks. If public services are not digital-first, there is less incentive to build resilient, directly reachable infrastructure. If power and broadband coverage remain uneven, the economics of deeper network independence are weaker.
But the reverse is also true. Without more visible networks, cloud providers, CDNs and data center operators may underestimate African demand.
Carl Aniambossou, Chief Executive Officer, Sud Telecoms and a leader at the Cotonou Internet Exchange, made this point directly. He said major content providers and CDNs often look at the number of active networks in a market before deciding whether to invest. In practice, that means looking at ASNs. A country with few ASNs can appear smaller or less mature than it actually is.
This is the hidden cost of Africa’s routing gap. It does not only affect engineers. It affects investment signals.
If an African market has millions of users but only a handful of visible routed networks, demand can be masked. CDNs may delay cache deployment. Cloud providers may see insufficient network depth. Edge infrastructure companies may struggle to justify local investment. Data centers may find that demand exists, but is not visible in the way global infrastructure companies measure markets.
Aniambossou also gave a practical example of inefficient routing. In Côte d’Ivoire, traffic from a nearby user to a local server still left the country before returning, even though a local IXP existed. Beyond a capacity problem, this is a routing and configuration problem. It means local traffic can still take an international detour, adding cost and latency where neither is necessary.
Olawale Owoeye, Chief Executive Officer, Cedarview Communications, put the cost issue more bluntly. Poor routing makes internet access more expensive for everyone. He said many Nigerian universities still lack ASNs and IP resources, despite being institutions that should lead technical knowledge and research networking. When their traffic is poorly routed, it may travel back to Lagos or another hub before returning, increasing transport costs and reducing efficiency.
For universities, banks and public institutions, this is no longer a niche technical concern. It is an operating-cost issue, a resilience issue and an institutional-readiness issue. If a university generates substantial traffic but cannot be seen clearly by an IXP or cache provider, the local internet ecosystem loses efficiency. If a bank relies on upstream providers without proper routing independence, redundancy may exist on paper but fail under pressure.
Africa’s IPv6 gap adds another layer. Globally, IPv6 has moved from future concern to present reality. Google’s public IPv6 measurement shows the share of users accessing Google over IPv6, and the Internet Society reported that native IPv6 access crossed 50% for the first time on March 28, 2026. APNIC’s measurement shows several African sub-regions still in single digits, including Western Africa at 7.61%, Northern Africa at 5.02% and Southern Africa at 3.30% in the cited measurement.
IPv6 matters because IPv4 scarcity is now structural. AFRINIC’s statistics portal shows limited available IPv4 resources, while IPv6 resources remain abundant. For mobile operators, cloud platforms, IoT, public digital systems and AI-era infrastructure, IPv6 is no longer a nice-to-have. It is the addressing layer for future scale.
Yet the panel made clear that Africa’s IPv6 adoption problem resembles its ASN problem: awareness, training, bureaucracy, upstream dependency and weak institutional urgency. Bryce noted that some organisations still depend on upstream providers that have not deployed IPv6 in their own core networks. Nkeramugaba said the Internet Society is incorporating IPv6 into training and using its Pulse platform to track deployment. He also pointed to Rwanda’s public-sector IPv6 compliance push as an example of how policy can create momentum.
Audience interventions sharpened the policy question. One participant pointed to Brazil, which has more than 10,000 ASNs, as a model Africa should study. Another referenced Nigeria’s IPv6 Forum, inaugurated by the Nigerian Communications Commission in April 2026, with a mandate to support IPv6 adoption and train engineers.
The Brazil comparison is useful because it shows that ASN adoption can be shaped by deliberate ecosystem action. Policy alone is not enough. But policy, community mobilisation, training, operator engagement and clear incentives can move the market.
The strongest conclusion from the session was that Africa should not choose between internet adoption and ASN adoption. It needs both.
Internet adoption brings more people and businesses online. ASN adoption gives major institutions recognisable network identities and routing control. One grows demand; the other strengthens the architecture that carries that demand.
Osunrinde closed the session with a memorable analogy: it is like asking whether a city needs more people or better house addresses. The answer is both. Internet adoption brings people into the digital city. ASNs give banks, universities, government platforms, data centers and enterprises their own recognised addresses. Without them, too many organisations depend on a few landlords to receive visitors, direct traffic and manage access.
That is the 2.2% problem. Africa is increasingly connected, but too many of its networks remain invisible, dependent or poorly routed. The continent has built more pipes, landing stations, fiber routes, exchange points and data centers. The next challenge is to make more of its networks independently visible, locally reachable and economically legible.
For Africa’s digital infrastructure market, the routing layer can no longer be treated as background plumbing. It is part of the investment case for cloud, the cost structure of broadband, the resilience of banks, the future of universities, the credibility of public digital infrastructure and the economics of local content delivery.
Africa does not only need more people online. It needs more networks that the internet can actually see.
