Until January 2023, when Starlink launched in Nigeria—its first African market—the continent’s telecom industry operated on a simple assumption: connectivity had to be built from the ground up.
Mobile operators have spent decades investing billions of dollars in towers, fibre networks, spectrum licences, and, more recently, data centres to connect millions of people across Africa. The farther a community was from existing infrastructure, the more expensive and difficult it became to serve.
Starlink’s arrival challenged that logic. By delivering high-speed internet directly from low-Earth orbit satellites, the company introduced a new connectivity model that bypassed many of the infrastructure constraints that have long shaped Africa’s telecom industry.
Three years later, as Starlink expands across the continent and attracts a growing subscriber base, mobile operators are being forced to rethink not only how they extend coverage but also how they compete, invest, and grow.
Starlink now operates in 27 African countries and delivers faster download speeds than most traditional fixed broadband providers, according to the latest data from Ookla’s Speedtest Intelligence, released on June 15.
