I'm so glad to find some sane voices here! I mean, sure, if you're really serving a lot of traffic to Mombasa, akamai will reduce latency. You could also try to avoid multi megabyte downloads for a simple page.
While there are lots of bad examples out there - keep in mind its not quite that straight forward as it can make a big difference whether those resources are on the critical path that blocks first paint or not.
It’s not an either or thing. Do both. Good sites are small and download locally. The CDN will work better (and be cheaper to use!) if you slim down your assets as well.
