Africa Data Centres, a business of Cassava Technologies group has announced that the London Internet Exchange (LINX) has brought them on board as a full point of presence (PoP) for the new East African interconnection hub, LINX Nairobi.
The announcement follows news of a strategic partnership last month between the two organisations, to ensure growth and opportunities across new markets in Africa, enhance connectivity, and bring digital services to citizens.
LINX Nairobi is set to go live in the coming weeks and is the region’s first interconnected, multi-site Internet Exchange Point (IXP). The technical specification of the platform mirrors LINX’s designs in the UK and the US, offering redundancy and resilience for networks peering there.
Kenya is in a unique position to serve the entire East Africa region with its fast-growing fibre connectivity, through the well-connected submarine cable network that has pathways to Europe, the Middle East, and Asia.
With this announcement, customers at the Africa Data Centre’s NBO1 facility in Nairobi will have direct access to the new LINX Nairobi peering community in Kenya via a single cross-connect and will also benefit from additional services such as LINX’s around-the-clock, on-call support and portal access.
In addition, networks that connect to LINX Nairobi from any of the data centre locations will be able to set up peering arrangements with each other, building a strong digital ecosystem in the area and encouraging traffic to be kept local.
Nurani Nimpuno, Head of Global Engagement for LINX comments, “With LINX Nairobi, we are not only creating a hub for Kenya, but for all of East Africa. The rapidly growing region has a huge demand for low latency, high-speed, and improved interconnectivity. LINX Nairobi will not only serve local networks but also attract international Internet providers and hyperscalers.”
Adding that “ADC has already grown an impressive portfolio of networks at its Nairobi data centre, so it makes absolute sense for LINX to work with ADC. LINX Nairobi will enable connections for all networks collocated at ADC and we welcome them into the new LINX Nairobi ecosystem.”
Tesh Durvasula, CEO of Africa Data Centres adds “By adding the LINX PoP in our NBO1 facility, we are able to better support our customers with an even greater variety of interconnection options than we have today.” He says Africa Data Centres partnership with LINX highlights the company’s strong growth and momentum. “We are very pleased to be working together to further enhance our ecosystem to create more interconnection and peering options to strengthen our ecosystem.”
