The duo of Internet eXchange Point of Nigeria (IXPN), a membership-based organisation, which provides a platform where networks interconnect directly within Nigeria and Medallion Datacenters, have canvassed for Internet peering and interconnectivity to boost integration.

They made this known at a workshop in Abuja, which had various stakeholders, mostly in the Internet ecosystem, peering and interconnectivity in attendance.

Explaining what peering and interconnectivity between various stakeholders will bring to the industry, the Chief Executive Officer of IXPN, Muhammed Rudman, noted that peering will enhance Internet connections for citizens and organisations alike, which will at the end of the day help the economy to thrive.

“Peering and interconnectivity through Internet exchanges address the challenges of traffic by ensuring the shortest possible route is used to reach a given destination. It keeps traffic as local as possible, which improves performance and enables faster connections between networks, facilitating high-speed data transfer, lower latency, increased bandwidth and improved fault tolerance,” he said at the gathering that attracted over 100 stakeholders, mostly network engineers and administrators.

He also called for a concerted effort to host content locally, stressing that doing so will provide additional revenue opportunities to local Internet Service Providers and data centers which in turn creates more jobs and serves as a driver for economic growth.

“Nigeria cannot continue to pay money to foreign hosting companies as it constitutes capital flight, puts more strain on Nigeria’s foreign earnings, slows the growth of local data centers and delays the development of new ones,” he said.

Warning that hosting data overseas has several implications on the economy, end users, Nigeria’s security, legal and businesses, Rudman argued that if the content is hosted locally in any of the data centres, it has a direct and indirect impact on the economy in terms of job creation and revenue for the government.

Also speaking, the Chief Executive Officer of Medallion Datacenters, Ikechukwu Nnamani, asserted that the strong growth of Africa’s digital economy will drive demand for more data centers on the continent. Thus, there is a need to have more data centers to be able to accommodate the surge.

“While we call for local hosting of content and data, there is also the need to build more data centers to be able to accommodate the strong growth of Africa’s digital economy,” he said.