Johannesburg, South Africa – 11 November 2025 – Teraco: A Digital Realty company and provider of interconnection platforms and vendor-neutral colocation data centres, today announced significant initiatives aimed at expanding cloud and internet connectivity across the African continent.
Teraco has launched a new partner API for its Africa Cloud Exchange (ACX) platform, empowering systems integrators, managed service providers, and network partners to wrap ACX and deliver seamless cloud interconnection services directly to their clients.
The partner API conforms to IX API standards, the globally accepted framework for internet exchange and interconnection automation. Through this open approach, Teraco is expanding market access and enabling partners to provision ACX connections at the software level, creating virtual connections to any participant on the exchange once a physical connection is established.
Teraco’s ACX improves enterprise hybrid and multi-cloud performance by providing secure, direct, and flexible interconnection to a wide range of local and global cloud providers. ACX allows enterprises to improve cloud application performance, reduce latency and network costs, scale on demand, and deliver an enhanced cloud experience to end users.
NAPAfrica, Africa’s leading and fastest-growing Internet Exchange Point (IXP), is expanding its community-focused infrastructure to support high-performance, resilient connectivity for enterprises and networks, ensuring reliable access and optimised performance for critical digital operations.
“These developments reflect Teraco’s ongoing commitment to creating a more connected and collaborative cloud ecosystem,” says Andrew Owens, Teraco Interconnection and Peering Lead.
Expanding ecosystem
NAPAfrica has reached a new milestone of six terabits per second (Tbps) of traffic, driven by the continued growth and expansion of its peering community. With 680 networks peering at its exchange points, NAPAfrica continues to play a critical role in keeping African internet traffic local, reducing costs, and improving network performance.
“Increased traffic volumes between cloud providers, enterprises, and networks highlight how peering is an enabler in accelerating digital transformation across the continent. Our mission is to provide participants with access to seamless, reliable infrastructure that enables the cost effective distribution of content across Africa,” says Owens.
“The continued growth at NAPAfrica is a testament to the continent’s vibrant internet community, which has embraced peering, data-intensive applications, cloud adoption, and the rising demand for video, content, and gaming services,” he adds.
Most of Africa’s internet traffic was traditionally routed through Europe, resulting in increased latency and higher costs. NAPAfrica has helped keep African traffic within the continent, leading to improved performance for ISPs, mobile operators, and enterprises, while fostering a more self-sufficient African internet ecosystem.
Hosted within Teraco data centres, Africa’s largest carrier and vendor-neutral data centre operator, NAPAfrica operates in Johannesburg, Cape Town, and Durban, three of South Africa’s key internet traffic hubs. NAPAfrica serves as a critical interconnection point for regional and international networks. Teraco facilitates direct interconnections with major ISPs, CDNs, global cloud providers, and enterprises, offering a seamless, cost-effective peering experience.
Enhanced network performance
As global cloud providers grow their presence in Africa, NAPAfrica supports this momentum with robust infrastructure, positioning itself as a key enabler of internet services and cloud adoption across the region. NAPAfrica’s adoption of the Kentik Network Observability platform provides peering members with critical network insights, allowing them to optimise traffic flows, detect anomalies, and enhance performance.
In March, NAPAfrica offered 400Gbps interconnects to its clients, accommodating the growing bandwidth demands of content and cloud providers. This is complemented by more than 2,300 physically connected ports and a total connected capacity of almost 45 terabits.
Where sub-Saharan Africa meets global content and cloud
NAPAfrica attracts global technology leaders and content providers, including Akamai, Amazon, Cloudflare, Google, Meta, Microsoft, Netflix, and TikTok, enabling direct content delivery and cloud access across Africa. In 2025, NAPAfrica welcomed 32 new members, including Cable & Wireless Seychelles, Rain Networks, and SES.
South Africa’s strategic position as a landing point for subsea cables, including 2Africa, ACE, EASSy, Equiano, METISS, SAT3/SAFE, Seacom, and WACS, has significantly bolstered international connectivity. Networks across sub-Saharan Africa peer at NAPAfrica to access global content efficiently.
Although many global IXPs charge for port access, NAPAfrica offers free peering, enabling ISPs, content providers, and enterprises to reduce transit costs while improving network performance.
Cache server deployments
NAPAfrica has deployed additional cache servers in Teraco data centres to cover regional connectivity requirements, including hosting Netflix Open Connect in Cape Town and Durban. By reducing the distance data must travel, this initiative enables faster load times and enriches the user experience for local audiences.
About NAPAfrica
NAPAfrica is Africa’s leading interconnection platform, supporting a diverse ecosystem of global carriers, cloud providers, CDNs, ISPs, enterprises and digital services. Operating Internet Exchange Points (IXPs) within Teraco’s data centres in Cape Town, Durban, and Johannesburg, NAPAfrica is dedicated to making internet access more accessible across Africa. The IXP now has 680 members from over 50 countries and hosts community events and online discussions to foster collaboration. Visit https://www.napafrica.net for more details.
About ACX
Teraco’s ACX improves enterprise hybrid and multi-cloud performance by providing secure, direct, and flexible interconnection to a wide range of local and global cloud providers, including AWS, Alibaba, Huawei, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, Oracle Cloud, and Zadara. ACX allows enterprises to improve cloud application performance, reduce latency and network costs, scale on demand, and deliver an enhanced cloud experience to end users. As Africa’s most interconnected platform, ACX offers a low-risk entry point for cloud consumers and providers to host and connect their infrastructure. Clients gain access to direct interconnect options across African terrestrial fibre, satellite connectivity, and submarine cables within an open market for interconnection. Visit https://www.teraco.co.za/platform-teraco/africa-cloud-exchange/ for more information.
About Teraco
Teraco, a leading carrier-neutral colocation provider in Africa, is the first provider of highly resilient, vendor-neutral data environments in sub-Saharan Africa. With its world-class data centre infrastructure and network-dense ecosystems, Teraco forms a vital part of the African internet’s backbone and is essential to the modern enterprise’s digital transformation strategy. Teraco is majority-owned by Digital Realty (NYSE: DLR) – offering customers a global data centre platform designed to enable digital businesses to scale within a highly connected data community across 300+ facilities in 50+ metros across 25+ countries on six continents – and a consortium of private equity investors, including Berkshire Partners LLC and Permira. For more information, please visit teraco.co.za or follow us on LinkedIn and X.
About Digital Realty
Digital Realty brings companies and data together by delivering the full spectrum of data center, colocation, and interconnection solutions. PlatformDIGITAL®, the company’s global data center platform, provides customers with a secure data meeting place and a proven Pervasive Datacenter Architecture (PDx®) solution methodology for powering innovation, from cloud and digital transformation to emerging technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), and efficiently managing Data Gravity challenges. Digital Realty gives its customers access to the connected data communities that matter to them with a global data center footprint of 300+ facilities in 50+ metros across 25+ countries on six continents. To learn more about Digital Realty, please visit digitalrealty.com or follow us on LinkedIn and X.
