According to statistics featured on Ookla’s NetIndex, Rwanda has the fastest Internet speed in Africa – faster than Ghana, Nigeria and South Africa. The central African country currently has an average download speed of up to 7.28 Mbps, which is more than double the 3.28 Mbps speed it had just six months ago.
Ghana, which was at the top of the list in March 2012, has now moved down three places to fourth on the list, with Libya (5.12 Mbps) and Ethiopia (4.82 Mbps) taking up the second and third spot, respectively.
Rwanda’s Minister of Youth and ICT, Jean Philbert Nsengimana, said although the result was good news for the country, a lot more work still needs to be done.
“This shows that our efforts are paying off although we still need to do more in the area of affordability of broadband. Rwanda’s performance in broadband speed is a result of deliberate efforts of the government that invested in fibre optic rollout and purchase of capacity,” said Nsengimana.
According to The New Times, “other African countries with the fastest broadband speeds include Kenya with 4.34 Mbps, currently ranked 5th in Africa, dropping from 2nd position six months ago; Morocco with 3.51 Mbps, ranked 8th in Africa; and South Africa with 3.31 Mbps, ranked 10th in Africa and 118th in the world.
Nigeria ranks 13th in Africa and 138th in the world with broadband download speeds of 2.73 Mbps and remains the second West African country with the fastest broadband speed after Ghana.”
Rwanda currently relies on three submarine fibre optic cable systems for Internet connection such as the East Africa Submarine Cable System (EASSY), The East African Marine Systems.
Charlie Fripp – Consumer Tech editor
This article is in correct, Kawuleza Connect in South Africa delivers up to 50 Mbps to corporate clients and 8 Mbps to home users!
Ok man !!!
This article is talking about FIXED LINE connections which are the most reliable and the AVERAGE.
FIXED LINE, well anything can beat Telkom! Kawuleza boasts a 99.99% up time p/a so don't know about FIXED LINE being most reliable, especially in Africa when the copper is always being stolen!
does not make reference to FIXED LINE makes reference to Broadband which is normally associated with a wireless solution, also makes reference to fibre which is only the main infrastructure, I seriously doubt they have fibre to the home?
What about coverage wise? Telkom is all over the country. You most likely live in an ADSL unfortunate area (or don't want to get ADSL), which is an issue, in regards to the ADSL exchange. But live in a city or town, and want decent internet, even though they might be stolen, there are contingencies atleast. Telkom's the way to go. True though, wirelss operators are booming and competing.
Hey Khanya sure Telkom does have a larger foot print, but are definitely not all over the country! The fact remains that only 10% of the country is covered and to cover the rest with ADSL or Fibre is too costly, the only way to do it is with wireless. At the moment if you look at the speedtest consensus for the year, you talking about an average of 512Kbps in South Africa. That figure is rather alarming when the rest of the world has 10 X that to the home! Sure at the moment Kawuleza Connect does not have the same coverage but this is growing on a daily basis! Because Kawuleza service is so good ISP's are starting to make use of our network to deliver the last mile rather than use ADSL purely because we deliver faster and more reliable service! ADSL has one big flaw and that is the fact that the upload is extremely slow and believe me that cant change because ADSL is asynchronous!