The premise of the article seems a bit flawed: Nigerians are not replicating hyperscalers, but more like building local Hetzners. And that is a fine idea!
A big problem for people doing this, however, is that peering is pretty much nonexistent in Nigeria (and, for that matter, most of Africa). So, traffic from, say, Airtel (where a lot of consumers are) to Globacom (which hosts a lot of major businesses), will not stay on the continent, but go via London or Marseille instead. And, also worth keeping in mind, from Lagos to those destinations, Joburg or Cape Town are actually double the distance, even though they might 'sound' closer.
So, yeah, I wish everyone involved all the best, but it will be an uphill battle. Convenience and latency make 'big tech' pretty hard to avoid, and 'strong crypto' would be my bet over 'local facilities', but, yeah...
Yes that's crazy. I didn't know there was serious lack of peering in Nigeria and other countries on the continent.
In South Africa however, peering is excellent and has been for decades. I also love using services hosted in-country. I pinged a service now and got 4ms RTT, try that with a London based server.
Indeed Africa has some of the highest wholesale internet prices in the world.
Having said that, there's a couple of new subsea fiber optic cables going live in Africa imminently.
I would expect wholesale prices to drop substantially.
> from Lagos to those destinations, Joburg or Cape Town are actually double the distance
As the crow flies, Lagos is slightly closer to Cape Town than London, though Marseille is indeed closer than virtually any part of South Africa (though not by much).
A big problem for people doing this, however, is that peering is pretty much nonexistent in Nigeria (and, for that matter, most of Africa). So, traffic from, say, Airtel (where a lot of consumers are) to Globacom (which hosts a lot of major businesses), will not stay on the continent, but go via London or Marseille instead. And, also worth keeping in mind, from Lagos to those destinations, Joburg or Cape Town are actually double the distance, even though they might 'sound' closer.
So, yeah, I wish everyone involved all the best, but it will be an uphill battle. Convenience and latency make 'big tech' pretty hard to avoid, and 'strong crypto' would be my bet over 'local facilities', but, yeah...