From Research on Africa’s Internet to Cloudflare’s Impact Week

About a month ago, I started a new role as a Systems Engineer at Cloudflare in Austin, Texas. My path here began much earlier though—during the early 2000s while travelling through Benin and other parts of West Africa, where I experienced firsthand how difficult Internet access was. As students then, we often relied on cybercafés where bandwidth was limited and costly; a home broadband connection was a luxury. Even "free" access at schools or universities came with heavy constraints. This experience shaped both my academic career and my decision to join Cloudflare.

A Decade of Studying Connectivity Gaps

My early exposure to these challenges led me to study telecommunications and later intern at Euphorbia Sarl, a local ISP. That internship showed me the daily realities of running a network in Africa and highlighted the shortage of measurements-driven research into why connectivity lags in the region.

I went on to pursue doctoral research at IMDEA Networks Institute and UC3M in Spain, collaborating with stakeholders to study Internet routing dynamics in Africa. Later, during my postdoc at CAIDA/UCSD, I investigated global network congestion and the impact of the SACS submarine cable deployment between Angola and Brazil on routing. Across that work, a clear pattern emerged: much of the web content for underserved regions was still served from the US and Europe. A lack of physical infrastructure—particularly local interconnections between networks—along with sparse local content, resulted in packet trombone effects, high transit costs, and persistently poor quality of service.

Local communities and bodies like the Internet Society and Packet Clearing House have worked to bridge that gap, but there’s still much to do. For me, the pandemic raised an urgent question: after years of research, how could I—like a frontline worker during COVID—directly help mitigate these connectivity issues?

Why Cloudflare, Why Pangea

Cloudflare emerged as the answer. During my interviews and onboarding, I found that the company’s values align closely with my own. The culture is welcoming and diverse; its leadership is attentive and accessible. I was also impressed by the sheer scale of the network, which spans 200+ cities worldwide and maintains one of the largest numbers of interconnects and peers anywhere. Notably, Cloudflare’s footprint is growing in the places that need it most—Latin America and Africa included.

Starting work mid-pandemic, I was pleased to discover Cloudflare regularly runs "innovation weeks" during which the company gives back to the community. Impact Week is one such effort, and it includes remarkable programs like Project Fair Shot (to help communities vaccinate fairly) and Project Galileo (to protect at-risk public interest groups).

But what excites me most is Project Pangea, launching today. Pangea improves security and connectivity for community networks at no cost. In my experience researching Internet performance in developing regions, community networks and their end users are exactly the ones who stand to benefit most from:

  • Cloudflare’s state-of-the-art DNS service, designed with privacy in mind
  • An intelligent routing system that continuously learns the best, least congested routes from and towards any region
  • Access to the company’s massive interconnection footprint

To stakeholders in developing regions—network operators, and organizations like ISOC and the RIRs—I’d make a direct appeal: enquire about Project Pangea. Cloudflare can be a tremendous partner, and the benefits will go beyond the network itself to the broader community it serves.