ACIX expands in Kinshasa, becomes DRC’s first distributed IX

The Africa Congo Internet Exchange (ACIX) has expanded to a second data centre in Kinshasa, making it the first distributed internet exchange in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Operator Internet pour tous, in partnership with DE-CIX and DRC-based connectivity provider UNITED S.A., announced on 19 May 2026 that ACIX is now live at OADC Texaf’s FIH1 facility in Kinshasa, in addition to its original site. The expansion is intended to deliver lower latency and greater resilience for data traffic in equatorial Africa.

Building on a slow start

When tech.africa surveyed Africa’s expanding internet exchange landscape in May 2025, ACIX had been launched but, as we noted then, “hadn’t gained much traction yet.” A year later, that has begun to shift. Adding a second carrier-neutral site widens ACIX’s footprint and enables peering across multiple physical locations within Kinshasa.

ACIX was established in 2023 under DE-CIX’s DE-CIX-as-a-Service (DaaS) programme, which provides installation, operations, and commercial support to partner-run exchanges. The exchange is operated on behalf of Internet pour tous, a Congolese NGO supporting the government’s Plan National du Numérique “Horizon 2025”.

Why distributed matters

Distributed exchanges route peering across multiple physical sites within a single metro. The model improves resilience against outages and gives networks more flexibility on where to interconnect. Established African exchanges such as INX-ZA, which operates as a single exchange across Johannesburg, Cape Town and Pretoria, have long used this model.

“ACIX is more than an Internet Exchange; it is foundational digital infrastructure for the future of Central Africa,” said Hussein Ibrahim, CEO of UNITED SA. “Strong digital ecosystems are built on strong interconnection.”

OADC Texaf, part of WIOCC Group’s Open Access Data Centres, operates the Tier III-certified FIH1 facility within TEXAF’s Silkin Village in Kinshasa. The site was the DRC’s first carrier-neutral colocation venue when it came online in 2023.

“Hosting ACIX within a carrier-neutral environment contributes to creating a trusted platform where all ecosystem participants can interconnect on equal terms,” said Mohammed Bouhelal, Managing Director and Director of Business Development for OADC Texaf.

Equatorial Africa hub ambitions

Kinshasa sits between the densely populated regions on either side of the African continent, and DE-CIX has positioned ACIX as a connectivity hub for equatorial Africa, enabling regional networks to exchange data closer to their users.

“The integration of OADC Texaf’s newly-built Kinshasa facility will enable additional networks to connect to the exchange and benefit from improved connectivity,” said Marco Brandstaetter, Global Program Manager for DE-CIX as a Service. “ACIX is creating digital opportunities for the DRC and equatorial Africa by aggregating networks and enabling low-latency and resilient local data exchange.”

DE-CIX, founded in 1995, operates internet exchanges in 60 locations across six continents. Its Frankfurt hub remains one of the world’s largest, with close to 1,100 connected networks and over 48 Exabytes of data exchanged annually.