Nigeria now retains between 60 and 70 per cent of its internet traffic within the country, a significant shift from the early years when most data had to be routed abroad, according to the Internet Exchange Point of Nigeria (IXPN).
IXPN Chief Executive Officer Mohammed Rudman disclosed this in Lagos during a media training on Nigeria’s digital infrastructure economy organised by Africa Hyperscalers and the Media Training Room.
Internet traffic domestication refers to keeping data exchange within national borders rather than routing it through servers in Europe or the United States before returning to local users. Keeping traffic local improves speed and reduces international bandwidth costs.
Rudman said domesticated traffic has grown from negligible levels at inception to two terabits per second as of December last year.
He attributed much of the growth to global technology companies such as Google, Meta, TikTok, Microsoft and Amazon, which have connected their servers directly to Nigeria’s exchange infrastructure. This ensures that popular services such as search, social media and video streaming are delivered locally.
However, Rudman said local content hosting remains weak. Nigeria hosts only 22 per cent of the top 1,000 websites most accessed by Nigerians, below Africa’s 34 per cent average. He added that about 80 per cent of websites using the .ng domain are hosted outside the country.
He noted that this explains why traffic domestication is largely driven by foreign-owned platforms rather than Nigerian digital services.
