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Kenya has fastest internet in Africa and Middle East -report


Kenya’s internet speed has been ranked as the fastest in Africa and Middle East in the latest Akamai’s State of the Internet report 2016.

The country, the report says, has an impressive average of 15mbps (megabytes per second) followed by Israel at 14.4mbps, South Africa had 6.6 mbps, Morroco (5.2 mbps) and Nigeria (4.1 mbps).

Out of the 108 countries that were sampled globally, Kenya ranked 23rd as it recorded better connectivity speeds with South Korea topping the list with the fastest connectivity at 26.1mbps.

“Kenya overtook third-quarter leader Israel to gain the top spot for average connection speeds among the surveyed Middle East and Africa countries in the fourth quarter,” adds the report.

“As noted previously, Kenya did not qualify for inclusion one year ago.It has clearly seen tremendous growth in high-speed connectivity in the past year,” the report goes on.

On Thursday, ICT Cabinet Secretary Joe Mucheru expressed satisfaction with the progress Kenya has made in the ICT sector.

INTERNET SPEED

He attributed the country’s high Internet speeds and connectivity to the successful implementation of the National Broadband Strategy that has provided a clear framework for public-private sector collaboration and partnership.

“The strategy has enabled the government to roll out the National Optic Fibre Broadband Infrastructure that has linked all the counties to the Internet by fibre cable. Fibre cable ground installation and provision of 4G network coverage has contributed to the high speeds and efficiency in connectivity,” said Mr Mucheru.

Akamai, the world’s leading content delivery network (CDN) provider, uses its globally distributed intelligent platform to process trillions of requests each day.

This allows the company to gather massive amounts of data on metrics related to broadband connectivity, cloud security, and media delivery.

The State of the Internet was built to leverage that data better enabling businesses and governments to make intelligent, strategic decisions.

Top ranked countries:

1. South Korea: 26.1Mbps

2. Norway: 23.6Mbps

3. Sweden: 22.817.3Mbps

4, Hong Kong: 21.9Mbps

5. Switzerland: 21.23Mbps

6. Denmark: 20.7Mbps

7. Finland 20.6Mbps

8. Singapore: 20.2Mbps

9. Japan: 19.6Mbps

10. Netherlands: 17.6Mbps