If you live in the United States, they sell you the Best VPNs to protect your privacy by encrypting your data but here in Africa, you just never know when your government will decide to ban some apps and a good VPN in hand is never a bad idea.
Virtual private networks are becoming essential in the continent as more and more countries impose social media bans on their citizens. So here are my top choices in VPN service providers, I will not include the prices or links and they are in no particular order.
Ps. Avoid free VPN providers: Running a VPN is expensive and if the VPN provider doesn’t make money from your service fees, they’re most likely harvesting and making money off your data
Hola VPN
Hola is a freemium VPN that gives you access to any site on the Internet. Users contribute idle device resources to a vast pool of residential IPs in exchange for a free, unrestricted browsing experience. Hola VPN Premium offers added features for advanced use
Hola VPN is the first community-powered or peer-to-peer VPN where users help each other to make the web more open and accessible for all.
You can also upgrade to Hola VPN Premium from as little as US$2.99/month to enjoy the power of the network without contributing idle resources. Hola VPN Premium also offers added privacy and security features.
Express VPN
- Simultaneous Connections: 5 or unlimited with the router app
- Kill Switch: Yes
- Logging: No browsing logs, some connection logs
- Countries: 94
- Locations: 160
- Trial: 30 days
You’ve probably heard of this one, ExpressVPN is one of the most popular VPN providers out there, offering a wide range of platforms and protocols.
Express VPN offers 160 server locations in 94 countries and does not log browsing history or traffic destinations, it does, however, log dates connected to the VPN service, the amount transferred, and VPN server location.
SurfShark
- Simultaneous Connections: Unlimited
- Kill Switch: Yes
- Logging: billing data
- Trial: 30 days
Surfshark is another cheap VPN that has a very strong security focus, offering AES-256-GCM, RSA-2048, and Perfect Forward Secrecy encryption. To prevent WebRTC leaks, Surfshark offers a special purpose browser plugin designed specifically to combat those leaks.
Surfshark’s also offers a multihop option that allows you to route connections through two VPN servers across the Surfshark private network. The company also offers some inexpensive add-on features, including ad-blocking, anti-tracking, access to a non-logging search engine, and a tool that tracks your email address against data breach lists.
NordVPN
- Simultaneous Connections: 6
- Kill Switch: Yes
- Logging: billing data
- Countries: 59
- Servers: 5517
- Trial: 30 days
Next in line is NordVPN, another popular consumer VPN out there. NordVPN offers more than just VPN services with support for P2P sharing, a service it calls Double VPN that does the second layer of encryption, Onion over VPN which allows for TOR capabilities over its VPN, and even a dedicated IP if you’re trying to run a VPN that also doubles as a server.
It supports all the usual platforms and a bunch of home network platforms as well. The company also offers NordVPN Teams, which provides centralized management and billing for a mobile workforce.
IPVanish
- Simultaneous Connections: Unlimited
- Kill Switch: Yes
- Logging: billing data
- Servers: 1,500
- Locations: 75
- Trial: 30 days
Last but definitely not least is IPVanish, a commercial VPN service based in the United States. While providing end-to-end network encryption, IPVanish allows its users to appear in one of more than 75 different locations
Whether you need a Wi-Fi hotspot shield or safe file access, this VPN has a solution for you. IPVanish VPN and storage tools simplify online security for the whole home with setups for desktop, mobile, consoles, and routers.
