On the Internet Connectivity in Africa

This study measures growth of Internet connectivity in Africa from 2010 to 2014 with a focus on inter-country relationships. An initial analysis reveals a modest increase in the number of participating countries but an explosive increase in the number of routers and network links. We then form the first country level topology maps of the African Internet and evaluate the robustness of the network. We study raw connectivity, pairwise shortest paths, and betweeness centrality, suggesting how improvements can be made to the inter-country African connectivity to enhance its robustness without reliance on paths traversing multiple continents.