Telecom
NDSF2021: Nothing Surpasses Internet in Human Transformation says Mba-Uzoukwu
Mr. Chinenye Mba-Uzoukwu, President of the Institute of Software Practitioners of Nigeria (ISPON) has described the Internet as a leveler for education and prosperity in a digital economy, even as software Nigeria has the key and capacity to contribute to national development.
Mba-Uzoukwu made this known in his keynote address to the 2021 Nigeria DigitalSENSE Forum on Internet Governance for Development (IG4D) held at the Golden Tulip Essential Hotel, International Airport Road, Lagos on Thursday, June 10, and chaired by the President, Nigeria Computer Society (NCS), Prof. Adesina Sodiya, who was represented by Dr. Olusoji Okunoye, with the theme: Digital Cooperation: Enhancing Multistakeholder Governance for Digital Economy.
ISPON president who dwelt on “Role of Nigerian Software in Enhancing Governance in Digital Economy,” noted that there is nothing in human history as transformative as the Internet, because it has largely changed everything and outlined some of these epochal changes to include the potential to level the playing field, namely education, healthcare, prosperity, lifestyle and well-being.
He also pointed out how humanity got here was not a stand-alone, hence the imperative to recognize an ‘ecosystem’ in the technology space that is systemic in outlook. Highlighting that in technology, the most intriguing ecosystem is the innovation ecosystem, a “human network that generates extraordinary creativity and output on a sustainable basis.”
Such an ecosystem, Mba-Uzoukwu said, performs best when it recognizes, synergizes and optimizes on the basis of a multi-stakeholder approach that accommodates the complexity of the ecosystem which creates dimensions of impact that make governance an intentional mandate.
“Existence of telecommunication infrastructure, the first precondition to overcome the digital divide; Current economic models for Internet access, place a disproportionate burden on developing countries, Challenges to financing access to backbones, ‘Free-rides’ of Over-The-Top services and challenges of balancing their contributions to telecom sectors of developing countries based on issues of taxation,” he said.
For instance, he said, global regulation of intellectual property rights paved the way for developing countries to access knowledge and information online, which led to enthronement of “Truly, ‘Education For All’ for the first time in human history,” which avails developing countries to catch up, and this is the single most important factor.
This factor, he also said, encouraged ISPON to dare to dream again, which underscored the group’s answer in envisioning growth of Software Nigeria into a world-class industry, and a key contributor to national development.
To realise this, ISPON President revealed, they planned to sensitize the community about the local software industry; provide fora to share software development initiatives; aggressively support the expansion of Nigeria’s human capital, foster co-operation with Nigeria IT in diaspora; cooperate with other countries to boost global exposure and competitiveness.
At the policy level, Mba-Uzoukwu said that the government, industry and academia, must continue to drive the evolution of policy across multiple dimensions including national security, intellectual property and privacy rights, education, information access and data sovereignty.
Education, for instance, he said, must be harnessed with the national aspirations to the potentials of technology for powering the pragmatic development of world-class, innovation cum oriented and entrepreneurial work force. He emphasized that employment and entrepreneurship must deploy technology in support of the genuine aspirations of Nigerian youth.
“Beginning with the National Association of Computer Science Students (NACOSS), we will create and expose opportunities for jobs and wealth creation through personal enterprise,” he declared.
Further, ISPON President said that by nurturing innovation as a national capability, “we must be the advocates and a platform for unleashing creativity and ingenuity of our people, particularly the youth and women whose access to opportunity are hindered.”
Mba-Uzoukwu underscored the fact that to achieve the World Summit on the Information Society, there is need for a common vision, desire and commitment to build a people-centric, inclusive and development-oriented Information society where everyone can create, access, utilize and share information.
He cautioned that the implication of non-alignment to the above common vision, the concepts of social justice, merit and asynchronous development will not be part of its main drivers.
He noted that with the rapid diffusion of technology, “we must encourage a bridge-building, inclusive and partnering approach to community that embraces and empowers the youth, women and leverages on the experience of the elders.”
NDSF2021 witnessed other speakers including the Managing Director of the Nigerian Communications Satellite (NigComSAT), Dr. Abimbola Alale who was represented by the Acting Manager Marketing, Mrs Ibiye Ukoko, Mr. Aderemi Adejumo of CloudFlex, Mr. Mohammed Rudman represented by Mr. Jacob Dagunduro, Executive Director, Operations at DigitalSENSE Africa Mrs. Nkem Nweke, and Mr. Francis Uzor or Wisdom Computer Technologies, among others.
Renowned digital innovation expert, Prof. Chris Uwaje, has celebrated Leo Stan Ekeh as a visionary “digital anticipator” and pioneer on the occasion of his 70th birthday.
Leo Stan Ekeh
In a heartfelt tribute, Uwaje hailed Ekeh as the “Saint Leo of all Stars from the Ekeh Universe,” saluting his masterclass contributions to human innovation, development, and global youth empowerment.
Visionary Impact on Africa, World
Uwaje praised Ekeh’s foresight, emotional intelligence, and resilience in transforming digital entrepreneurship, creating millions of jobs, billions in economic value, and expanded education access worldwide.
The encomium spotlighted Ekeh’s trailblazing solutions driving sustainable development, employment, and economic growth across Africa and beyond.
“Your legacy continues to shape a brighter future,” Uwaje noted, adding that Ekeh’s “extraordinary best is yet to come” as the “Field-Marshall of ANTICIPATORS.”
Cheers to More Foresighted Legacy
Uwaje declared: “From the gaze into the digital cloud: ‘the world ain’t seen nothing yet’!” while toasting Ekeh as the “true digital Conqueror of Africa and the world.”
The tribute underscores Ekeh’s enduring influence in digital disruption, innovation, and youth-focused initiatives that continue to inspire global progress.
Internet Exchange Point of Nigeria is positioning as a regional Internet Exchange hub for West Africa in terms of infrastructure and traffic. Muhammed Rudman, chief executive officer, IXPN, stated this at its 2026 members engagement forum held in Lagos. He noted some of the major milestone IXPN achieved last year to include one terabit of traffic recorded in March 2025.
“At that time, we became the 63rd internet exchange point in the world. Among all the exchanges in Europe and America and in the entire world, we become the number 63 in the world. To achieve that one terabit of traffic. Again, we were able to achieve two terabits of traffic within seven, eight months of the year.
“We achieve this by ensuring that we push for members to upgrade, those that were on 1 Gig to 10 Gig, those on 10 Gig to 100 Gig. We had a strategic infrastructure upgrade across our networks, put 400 Gig enable switches, increase our fiber links to all the data centers and we onboarded 17 new members last year. All the trainings and the operational excellence ensured that our network is up and running 24/7,” he said.
Industry Impact
The impact of that one terabit traffic is data sovereignty. “We were able to domesticate. Based on the survey we conducted, 54% of our members said that they are exchanging 50% of their traffic and above locally, which is really, significant one.
“We are also setting up a benchmark for other African IXPs. I can assure you that in all the community driven internet exchange points in Africa, we are the number one. There’s a community driven internet exchange point in South Africa that was established 10 years before IXPN. There is one in Kenya that was established 6 years before IXPN, but we are way ahead of them when it comes to internet traffic.
“We are also promoting intra African connectivity. As at today, we have customers from Niger, from, Burkina Faso, trying to reach to Nigeria. Recently, we onboarded a very large company in Ivory Coast, to connect to Nigeria.
“Gradually, Nigeria is tilting towards becoming the regional hub for West Africa, where you see Internet Service Providers coming to achieve that. And in terms of the traffic, in 2015 we were at four Gigabits per second. It moves to 21 in 2017 and 52 gigabits per second.
“But by the year 2023 it has reached 540 gigabits. By 2024 we have reached 900 gigabits. But by the end of 2025 we have achieved the two terabits of traffic”.
Network Infrastructure Development
Some of the technical feet IXPN achieved includes, deployment of sFlow; which is a peer to peer traffic analysis. “We’re able to see what members are exchanging between themselves and between the data centers, not the actual content or information, but rather the volume of traffic, and also between our data centers. And based on this, we’re able to do the upgrades.
“We did a multiple link upgrades from 300 Gigabits last year from Digital Realty to Equinix. It was 300 Gig as at the end of 2024, and by 2025, we’ve increased that to 500 gigabits per second. Digital Realty to Rack Center, it was 200 Gigabits per second. We also upgraded that to 500 Gigabits per second.
Open Access Data Centre to Equinix. We’ve upgraded from 20 Gigabits per second to 200 Gigabits per second. We always monitor the ports, and based on that, we increase immediately we reach the threshold of 80%.
“We did an upgrade on the IXP manager. This allows each member to have a login portal to see the traffic they are exchanging and other details, the port as well as to do their own configuration,” he added.
Technical Project Milestones
Microsoft connected cache. “We deployed Microsoft content cache and that has been deployed in Lagos. It was 25 Gigabits per second as of 2024 by 2025 we had to upgrade the infrastructure to 75 Gigabits per second servers, that will be able to accommodate all the Microsoft updates they are doing, exports, download and among others.
“This is part of the content that Microsoft is not providing locally, but we got those servers deployed, and our intention is by next year to see how we can replicate this across the country. Last year, we also deployed the same server in Abuja so that the Abuja people and the Kano people can reach that content without coming back to Lagos.
The Google Global Cache (GGC); “We are hosting all these at IXPN. We also upgraded from 53 Gigabits per second servers in 2024 to 153 Gigabits per second. And this is a huge traffic of YouTube. And as we speak, we are also working towards upgrading those servers,” he explained.
Strategic Partnerships
“We signed an MoU last year between us and an IXP in Senegal, when we went for West African peering forum. A lot of African ISPs are looking to us to see how we can guide them and support them.
“For example, internet exchange point from Gabon, internet exchange point from Rwanda and ISPs in Africa are looking at us as a model to copy, and we tend to support them. We also had a strategic partnership with CIRA, the Canada Internet Registry Association, which is similar to Nira, the Nigerian Internet Registration Association, to have their secondary authoritative servers into Nigeria as an anycast instance. And when they are hosting that, they are hosting other top-level domains as well, like alibaba.info.org.ca, are also hosted with us.
“Since they launched last year, we have seen a traffic of over 1000 DNS responses per second. Presently, there are 13 global root servers in the world, and those 13 servers are the ones that translate your IP address into a domain name. Any website you browse, you put a domain name, it translates into an IP address and its chain of referrals, Nigeria has.ng as a country, called Top Level Domain”.
Earlier in his welcome address, Charles Nmeregini, Business Development Manager, IXPN, said that the members engagement forum is more than an annual country. “Today, we pause to celebrate the milestone, the milestone that we have reached together, the milestone that have bolstered our local traffic exchange, reduce latency and significantly lower the cost of Internet access across the nations and beyond.
“However, today is equally about the horizon. It is a strategic moment as we unveil our 2026 service road map, a forward-looking rubbing designed to deepen interconnection, enhance service delivery and unlock new value across the ecosystem. In an era defined by rapid technological shift, standing still is not an option.
“This forum will spotlight exclusive, strategic business opportunities, new avenues for growth, enhanced pairing capabilities and innovative service model tailored to give your organization a competitive edge. We are not just exchanging data, we are exchanging ideas that will drive the next wave of Nigeria digital economy,” he added.
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