Photo Sir Selwyn-Clarke Market CC BY 2.0
The Seychelles Internet Exchange Point (Sey-IXP) was successfully launched on 20 February 2015 in Victoria, Seychelles. Sey-IXP was officiated by Mr. Danny Faure, Vice President and Minister of ICT of Seychelles and Dr. Elham Ibrahim, African Union Commissioner for Infrastructure and Energy and attended by the Principal Secretary, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Principal Secretary, Department of ICT, Senior Government Officials and Leaders of the Industry.
The Sey-IXP was build to:
- Serve as a catalyst for innovation and development of Internet services and applications in Seychelles
- Support the Government efforts to implement E-government services
- Lower the cost of developing local hosting and application development
- Improve local Internet resilience by eliminating the dependence on international connectivity for local Internet services and Internet-based communications.
The IXP was established with the support of the African Internet Exchange System (AXIS), a project of the African Union implemented by the Internet Society. Under the AXIS project, the Internet Society conducted an IXP best practices workshop in Victoria from 22-23 July 2013 where more than 16 experts participated followed by a hands-on technical training to 19 network engineers from 24 – 28 February 2014.
The Internet Society’s Africa Interconnection and Traffic Exchange programme has been actively supporting the development of IXPs to boost local and regional interconnection. The programme aims to have 80% of Internet traffic exchanged in Africa by 2020, keeping local traffic local. This objective has been boosted by the appointment of the Internet Society to implement the African Union’s African Internet Exchange System (AXIS) programme.
- Find out more about AXIS.
- African Union press release on the Seychelles IXP launch
- Related article