Nigeria's domestic internet traffic has reached a record high of 1 terabit per second, a significant milestone that underscores the country's emergence as Africa's second-largest internet hub. According to the Internet Exchange Point of Nigeria (IXPN), this surge in traffic is driven by a dramatic increase in video consumption across platforms like Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube.

This growth is a testament to the country's shifting trend towards local content delivery, which is helping to lower costs and improve speeds in one of the continent's most connected nations. The traffic now routed through IXPN, a key digital infrastructure that allows internet service providers and content platforms to exchange data locally, signals a shift from reliance on international bandwidth to domestically hosted services.

As IXPN CEO Muhammed Rudman explained, "1 terabit per second means that 1 million people can concurrently make phone calls and Zoom meetings. It also means 200,000 people can watch local videos or Netflix at the same time. Without an internet exchange point, this traffic would have been going out of Nigeria." This milestone marks a significant improvement from the minimal traffic levels of 5-10 megabits per second when IXPN was launched in 2006.

Nigeria now ranks as the second-largest internet exchange hub in Africa, behind only South Africa, which handles over 4 terabits per second. The rising demand for video content is a key driver of this growth, with Nigeria boasting 38.7 million active Facebook users, 37.4 million TikTok users, and 27 million YouTube users as of early 2025, according to DataReportal.

In October 2024 alone, YouTube reported a 55% year-on-year increase in watch time among Nigerian users aged 18 and above, reaching more than 30 million people. TikTok and Facebook also recorded similar growth, with video content continuing to dominate usage patterns. Most of this increasing data load is being routed locally through IXPN, which has seen traffic levels rise rapidly since Google signaled its interest in peering with IXPN in 2009.

The actual connection in 2011 proved transformative, increasing traffic from under 20 Mbps to over 120 Mbps by 2012. This upward trend continued rapidly, hitting 600 Mbps within a year. By 2019, IXPN traffic had reached 126 gigabits per second, climbing further to 900 Gbps by December 2024. The latest milestone of 1 Tbps in March 2024 highlights how far Nigeria's internet ecosystem has come.

This surge in internet traffic has been driven not only by growing user demand but also by critical infrastructure investments, particularly the expansion of local data centers and direct interconnection agreements with global content giants like Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon, Starlink, TikTok, and Netflix, all of which now peer with IXPN.

According to Rudman, "Some of these companies are already exchanging between 10% and 30% of their traffic locally, with a few reaching up to 70%." This localization of content and data exchange is improving internet speeds, reducing latency, and making broadband more affordable for millions of users. It's a win-win for service providers and consumers alike, signaling Nigeria's accelerating shift toward a more self-reliant internet ecosystem.

As Nigeria continues to solidify its position as a key internet hub in Africa, this growth is expected to have far-reaching implications for the country's digital economy and its citizens. With more data being kept within the country's borders, Nigeria is poised to reap the benefits of a faster, more reliable, and more affordable internet, driving innovation, entrepreneurship, and economic growth in the years to come.