African proxy quickstart

How do I connect an African residential proxy?

1. Define the market observation before opening a connection

   Write down the country, destination, permission and expected output. For an application you own, start with a small HTTPS health or QA endpoint and a fixed test account. For a public retail study, record the product variant, seller, currency and delivery setting before selecting a route. A Nigerian connection and a Kenyan connection are useful only when the rest of the comparison is controlled.

   Choose a country-level test unless a specific city is essential. A Lagos requirement must remain distinct from a Nigeria requirement; do not silently relabel a broader observation when an appropriate city exit is unavailable.

2. Save the login and fund the prepaid balance

   Your account number is your login: save it somewhere safe. Add an email (optional) if you want a way to recover it. Without an email, a lost account number cannot be recovered. Keep the main account number separate from proxy usernames and the API keys used by project tools.

   Create a current top-up invoice for a supported coin and network. Send the exact amount, click “I’ve sent the payment”, and retain the invoice reference. The transfer is matched by its exact amount and credited once confirmed. A plan purchase spends credited balance; sending crypto and buying a traffic package are separate events. Follow the payment guide rather than reusing a previous invoice.

3. Buy a small plan and generate the country configuration

   The 1 GB plan costs $1.23. A new account still needs a top-up of at least $25, so package price and funding requirement are different. Check the current plan selection before purchasing. Prepaid residential and rotating-mobile traffic never expires: unused GB stay on your account until you use them.

   Generate the full proxy username for the required country in the client area. Use the gateway and protocol shown above, with the generated proxy password or supported allowlist route. Do not paste the main account login into a proxy field. The browser guide covers a manual check, and the Python guide contains a bounded diagnostic sample.

4. Verify the exit and inspect the control response

   Have your own endpoint record the arriving source address. Check that same address against two independently sourced geolocation datasets, recording source names and timestamps. Two rotating detector calls may observe different addresses, so they do not establish agreement about one exit.

   Check the expected response content as well as the status code. If a location dataset disagrees, pause location-sensitive conclusions. A successful health check establishes that bounded route; it does not prove that every retailer or advertising platform will accept the connection.

5. Preserve the result and stop on a refusal

   Keep a small result record containing country, observed address, timestamp, language, account state, application version and the permitted destination reference. Store credentials outside that shared record. Review a redirect before following it, and pause after an access refusal or rate limit rather than changing routes to continue.

   For an unresolved connection problem, send support the product, country setting, time and redacted error. Distinguish a gateway authentication error, a geolocation disagreement and a target response. That distinction makes a later Nigerian or South African measurement easier to review and avoids describing a missing sample as a market price change.