Broadband speeds: South Africa versus Africa

The latest Akamai State of the Internet report shows that South Africa’s average Internet speeds are well above most African countries, and that Johannesburg is the “fastest” city in Africa.

This information contradicts average speed test results from the popular Speedtest.net service which is often quoted in articles.

According to Ookla’s NetIndex, South Africa’s average broadband speed is 2.95Mbps, which makes SA the sixth best African broadband country after Libya (5.81Mbps), Ghana (5.46Mbps), Kenya (4.82Mbps), Angola (4.53Mbps) and Rwanda (3.46Mbps).

The Ookla NetIndex stats may however be based on only a limited number of tests from fast connections, which raises some questions about the accuracy of the results.

Akamai State of the Internet

Akamai’s State of the Internet report, which uses data gathered from the Akamai Internet platform to compile their reports, shows that South Africa competes favourably when it comes to broadband speeds in Africa.

Akamai further says that Johannesburg is the fastest city in Africa with an average Internet connection speed of 1.8 Mbps.

This research is based on the performance of connections from millions of unique IP addresses, making it an accurate reflection of broadband speeds on the continent.

The following graph clearly shows South Africa’s strong broadband speed performance compared with other countries in Africa. It should be noted that the latest Akamai State of the Internet report places South Africa at an average speed of 1,622kbps, well above Morocco’s 1,424kbps.

When looking at the average peak connection speed – a metric which represents an average of the maximum measured connection speeds across all of the unique IP addresses – South Africa performed well above other African countries.

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