AU Commissioner calls on Vice-President Danny Faure |20 February 2015

First Internet Exchange Point in Seychelles discussed

Better internet connectivity between African countries was the focus of discussions between the African Union Commissioner for Infrastructure and Energy, Dr Elham M. A. Ebrahim, and Vice-President Danny Faure yesterday at State House.

Dr Ebrahim is here to officially launch the Seychelles Internet Exchange Point (Sey-IXP) today at the International Conference Centre.

The IXP has been spearheaded by the Seychelles Internet Exchange Point Association (Sey-IX) with the support of the Department of Information Communication Technology (DICT) which falls under the portfolio responsibility of the vice-president and the African Union Commission.

It is to be recalled that the African Union Commission recently donated the main ICT equipment required for the setting up of the IXP in Seychelles. The equipment consists of Cisco switches and HP servers.

The IXP has already been launched in eight countries and the idea is to connect all the internet service providers to one hub in the country.

According to Dr Ebrahim this will save time and money in sending internet traffic to and fro and it will create an opportunity for Africa to have its local content within each country. The next step is to have it within the region and then within the continent.

“So I think this is one of the good projects that the African Union is implementing in African countries,” said Dr Ebrahim, who noted that the connectivity will provide a much faster internet connection within African countries as the online traffic will not ‘go outside’ as it will be within the country.

Other topics that Dr Ebrahim and Vice-President Faure discussed included the Blue Economy, a concept which Seychelles is spearheading on the continent.

“We also talked about the single market of air transport in Africa and the African Union’s theme for this year which is ‘Empowering Women for Development’,” she said.

She said the vice-president informed her of the swearing in of a new female puisne judge (Samia Govinden) on Wednesday which she considered as very good news.  

Dr Ebrahim congratulated the people of Seychelles for the good work they are doing and described the country as a model for encouraging and promoting tourism.

She made reference to the last tourism ministerial meeting held here aimed as promoting Africa as a tourism destination.