Wednesday saw Nairobi play host to the  inaugural Africa Peering and Interconnection Forum (AfPIF) organised by the Kenya Internet Exchange Point (KIXP) , Telecommunication Service Providers Association of Kenya (TESPOK)  and the Internet Society. The theme of the forum was "unlocking Africa regional Interconnection" and drew participants from Internet Service Operators within the continent.
Speaking at the forum, Samuel Poghisio, Kenya's Information and Communications minister announced that the government had scrapped the controversial universal fund in exchnage for mobile operators funding mobile villages instead.
“The digital village initiative had to be funded by either investors or government” the minister said.

There were also efforts to set up an East African regional backhaul system that would cover the five East African countries. This would be pursued via the region’s communications organizations which brings together regulators, operators of telecommunications, broadcasting and postal services.  Poghisio said that his ministry had a mission to have all districts covered by the National Fiber Optic Network by 2012. He also lauded the role that electronic communication played in the recently held Kenyan referendum (electronic vote tallying) and expressed hopes that electronic voting would be implemented by 2012.

The minister said he was actively involved in efforts to enable required legislation to allow for electronic voting. Commenting on high costs of obtaining wayleaves for infrastructure laying in urban areas, the minister  said that the role of the ministry was to provide regional connectivity while the decision of whether to grant concessions for wayleaves lay with the ministries of the Nairobi Metropolitan Development and the Local Government.
Dr Nii Quaynor from the African Network Operators Group (AfNOG) lauded the growth of organized institutions i the communications field since the 1998 ICANN conference in Benin. AfriNIC had played a role in the uptake of IPv4 and IPv6 addresses on the continent while ISOC Africa had influenced social and policy issues of the internet in Africa. Nii also thanked the Egypt, Mauritius and South African governments for their early seed contributions towards AfNOG.
He also lauded recent developments that saw the appointment of new officials to Ghana's National IT Agency (NITA).

"It is as though we are being asked to rebuild Ghana's internet infrastructure destroyed in the past. Trust me, we don't intend to miss this opportunity and expect we will call on you and all to make this worthwhile," said Nii.

Fibre connectivity between Kenya and Uganda had to use microwave links at the No-mans-land as regulators in the two countries could not agree on the modality of laying fibre across the patch of land. This is according to Michuki Mwangi from the Kenya Internet Exchange Point (KIXP) . Michuki said Africa had 19 Internet Exchange Points (IXPs) in 19 countries covering 35 per cent of the continent. The number would increase as Kenya would see the launching of the second IXP on Friday morning.

The continent experienced the highest growth of IXP traffic at 123 per centr last year compared to other continents, putting the traffic at 2.3 Gbps (Gigabits per second). This is still low compared with averages of more than 50 Gbps seen by other continents. There were five instances of Domain Name System (DNS) servers in the continent. Michuki stated that building an exchange point required about 20 per cent technical input whereas the rest was needed in convincing operators on the need and importance of an IXP. Kurtis Lindqvist, a professional on various bodies including ICANN emphasized that the aim of IXPs was to improve the quality of connectivity rather than to reduce the cost. 
Bill Norton announced that he had availed various resources related to peering at http://drpeering.net for free. Statistics for the Johannesburg IXP are also available at http://stats.jinx.net.za/.

Edmund Katiti from the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) stated that the organisation would be rolling out two African wide networks, a submarine fibre covering all African seafront countries known as Umojanet and a terrestrial cable linking all African countries known as Umojanet. The aim of these two projects is to provide an open access channel to smaller ISPs in the region which suffered from exclusivity deals by incumbents on existing fibre cables.

Already, work on the West-South Africa wing of Uhurunet has began. Uhurunet would be operated by a body  known as Baharicom and would be laid by France Telecom from France. Baharicom mostly consists of US and European investors at the moment though efforts are on to get a majority African investors on board.

Issues of mistrust between operators emerged where ISPs went to extents of generating fictional traffic or promising non-existent  future traffic growth in order to peer with others.  There was also a background issue of sabotage which hampers trust between the providers.

By the end of the forum on Thursday, it is expected that fruitful relationships and better understanding would be forged between the operators in attendance and that the forum would go a long way in improving interconnectivity in the region.