The economic impact of Meta’s edge infrastructure across 9 countries in the MENAT region

The internet has played an increasingly important role in enabling people to access internet content and services from anywhere in the world. It has also helped businesses to reach more customers, create innovative products and services and generate new forms of economic value. As user demand for online content and services grows, internet companies have been making significant investments in edge infrastructure to deliver user-generated content efficiently, including points of presence (PoPs) that connect backbones to internet service providers (ISPs), and caches that store and serve content locally.  

The primary focus of this report is to determine the economic impact of Meta’s private network investments in edge infrastructure (PoPs and caches) across nine countries in the Middle East, North Africa and Türkiye (MENAT) region.¹ These edge infrastructure investments enhance the functioning of the internet by enabling end users in the MENAT region to enjoy lower latency and an improved online experience. This, in turn, encourages end users to increase their use of the internet, including economic activity that contributes to GDP growth over time:

• An increase in end-user data consumption has resulted in an estimated annual real GDP increase (at 2024 prices and exchange rates) of USD10 billion to USD13 billion across the nine countries in this study in 2024, and between USD36 billion and USD48 billion over the 7-year period from the start of 2018 to the end of 2024.

• This increase in GDP also leads to corresponding additional jobs created. As of 2024, we calculate that the GDP uplift supported by Meta’s edge infrastructure investments translated to 400 000–510 000 jobs across the nine countries.

In addition, these investments help ISPs to achieve cost efficiencies, by delivering content closer to ISPs and saving them on long-distance transport, while also providing revenue opportunities for the ISPs based on the increased internet data usage.

Meanwhile, investments in other forms of digital infrastructure contribute to the development of these countries into regional connectivity hubs. For example, the 2Africa submarine cable, which Meta has taken a leading role in developing, will land in six of the nine countries of interest in this study and connect them to 33 countries in Africa, Asia and Europe.² This will bring significant amounts of new capacity and connectivity, as well as new landing stations that can act as magnets for complementary investments such as data centres and internet exchange points (IXPs).

Meta’s infrastructure helps to generate tangible economic benefits for the overall economy of different countries, as well as individuals and businesses that use Meta’s platforms – notably small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) – within them. Moving forward, these infrastructure investments are expected to continue playing an important role in facilitating consumer and business adoption of transformative new technology use cases, which would drive future economic growth.

This paper was produced independently by Analysys Mason with financial support from Meta Platforms Inc., and it does not reflect or prejudge Meta Platforms Inc.’s own views.

¹ Including the Arab Republic of Egypt (Egypt), the Republic of Iraq (Iraq), the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan (Jordan), the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), the Kingdom of Morocco (Morocco), the Sultanate of Oman (Oman), the State of Qatar (Qatar), the Republic of Türkiye (Türkiye) and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

² 2Africa, Updates.