Kenya outperforms South Africa, Nigeria on broadband latency
Kenya has ranked second among 16 English-speaking countries for fixed broadband latency, according to user speed tests collected by connection testing platform nPerf.
Between November 2025 and October 2026, Kenya recorded an average fixed latency of 29 milliseconds (ms). That put it just behind New Zealand, at 28ms, and ahead of Canada and the UK, which tied for third place at 33ms. Kenya’s latency improved by 22% compared with the previous year.
Latency measures the delay between sending a signal and receiving a response. Lower latency means a more responsive connection, which matters most for video calls, online gaming, video conferencing and, increasingly, cloud and AI-based services.
The ranking shows wide differences between countries, with average latency ranging from 28ms in New Zealand to 149ms in Ghana. Ireland ranked fifth with 37ms, followed by Pakistan (52ms), Australia (54ms) and India (56ms). Tanzania, the only other East African country in the ranking, was ninth with 58ms.
Further down the table were Singapore (65ms), the Philippines (67ms), the US (70ms), South Africa (71ms) and Nigeria (80ms). Sri Lanka (127ms) and Ghana (149ms) recorded the highest latency.
The results come as Kenya’s fixed internet market grows rapidly. According to the Communications Authority of Kenya (CA), fixed internet subscriptions reached 2.84 million in June 2026, up 32.4% from 2.14 million a year earlier.
Fibre accounted for 1.57 million of those connections, up 29.7% year on year, while terrestrial wireless connections grew 42.9% to just over 1.03 million. Satellite subscriptions, though still small at about 27,700, rose 54.4%.
Safaricom became the first operator to pass one million fixed data subscriptions, with 1.02 million, or 36.1% of the market. Jamii Telecommunications followed with 19.1%, ahead of Wananchi Group (10.4%), Ahadi Wireless (9.5%) and Poa Internet (8.8%).
Local internet infrastructure also plays a role in keeping latency low. When content and services are hosted or cached within the country, traffic doesn’t have to travel to servers in Europe or elsewhere and back. Kenya has five active internet exchange points (IXPs) in Nairobi and Mombasa, according to the Internet Society’s IXP Tracker. The largest, the Kenya Internet Exchange Point (KIXP) in Nairobi, has 146 members.
However, Kenya’s connectivity still depends heavily on subsea cables landing at Mombasa, which carry most of East Africa’s international traffic. In May 2024, damage to the EASSy and Seacom cables off South Africa disrupted internet services across East Africa, including Kenya, showing how vulnerable the region remains to cable faults.
New capacity is on the way. Seacom is planning a US$2 billion subsea cable linking Africa directly to Asia across the Indian Ocean, with Mombasa as its main East African landing point, due for completion in 2030.
The nPerf results are based on tests run by users and reflect average performance across those tests, rather than a controlled measurement of national network quality.
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