It begins with a promise. A satellite tv for pc dish on a tin roof. A blinking terminal in the course of rural Kisii. Immediately, a boy can watch a YouTube video with out buffering.
A trainer downloads a lesson plan in seconds. A clinic sends well being data to the capital immediately. It looks like the longer term has lastly arrived. However beneath the sign lies the story. And it’s older than it seems.
Within the late 1800s, European empires constructed telegraph strains from Cairo to Cape City to not join Africans however to regulate the continent. Telegraphy was not a communication service.
It was a surveillance weapon. Whoever managed the cables managed the empire. At the moment, the names have modified. The cables have moved to orbit. However the logic has returned.
By the beginning of 2024, the African Union estimated that simply 35 % of the continent’s inhabitants had entry to the web.
That is the bottom regional fee on the earth. In Sub Saharan Africa, greater than 800 million individuals stay unconnected. The answer, we’re advised, is disruption.
Enter Starlink, Elon Musk’s low Earth orbit satellite tv for pc community, designed to beam web to each nook of the planet. No cables. No towers. No ready for states to behave.
Starlink started focusing on African markets in 2023. It entered Nigeria, Kenya, Rwanda, and Mozambique. In every case, the rollout was quick and framed as liberation.
In Nigeria, the terminal price over 400,000 naira, greater than 500 US {dollars}, and the month-to-month subscription was priced at over 30 US {dollars}.
That is greater than double the nation’s minimal wage. In Kenya, Starlink initially priced its {hardware} at over 90,000 shillings, practically 700 US {dollars}, earlier than decreasing the price to 39,500 shillings after public backlash.
In Rwanda, the federal government supplied subsidies to make the service reasonably priced, paying for over 60 % of the price.
However nowhere in Africa does Starlink share possession. It doesn’t pay company tax within the international locations the place it operates. It doesn’t put money into native infrastructure or job creation past distribution.
It doesn’t adjust to native content material legal guidelines. Its satellites serve hundreds of thousands from house, however its energy is terrestrial. It collects income straight from African customers whereas evading African regulation. This isn’t entry. It’s dominance.
In South Africa, the place Starlink has not launched, the state refused to challenge a license until the corporate complied with the Digital Communications Act.
This legislation requires any telecom operator to have a minimal of 30 % possession by traditionally deprived teams. In different phrases, Black South Africans.
Starlink declined. The corporate supplied no willingness to discover a native fairness accomplice or adjust to transformation guidelines. Elon Musk, born in Pretoria, responded with frustration.
He reposted deceptive tales about white farmers being killed. He hinted that South Africa was hostile to progress. He framed his refusal not as vanity however as resistance to discrimination.
This was not unintentional. Musk has lengthy positioned himself as an anti-state entrepreneur. His corporations, from Tesla to SpaceX to Starlink, are designed to function past nationwide management.
He has described authorities regulation as a menace to innovation and has constantly resisted labor rights, environmental requirements, and platform accountability within the international locations the place he operates.
South Africa’s demand for shared possession was not merely a authorized hurdle. It was a menace to his philosophy.
Peter Thiel, who co-founded PayPal with Musk and in addition grew up in South Africa, shares this perception. Thiel is on report saying that democracy and capitalism will not be appropriate.
He funds initiatives that promote non-public governance, offshore knowledge havens, and what he calls sovereign individualism. His agency Palantir, named after the all-seeing crystal in Tolkien’s novels, sells surveillance software program to police and army companies around the globe.
In america, Palantir’s programs have powered immigration raids and predictive policing. In Europe, they’ve been used to watch refugees. In Africa, Palantir has begun embedding itself in public well being, customs, and safety programs by way of opaque partnerships.
Thiel and Musk share greater than a birthplace. They share an ambition to construct programs that function above the state and past accountability.
Palantir seeks to regulate knowledge. Starlink seeks to regulate distribution. Each depend on a story that frames African states as obstacles and their very own platforms as saviours.
Throughout the continent, governments are accepting this logic. Google’s Equiano cable, Meta’s 2Africa cable, Microsoft’s Azure areas in South Africa, and Amazon Internet Companies’ presence in Cape City all sign heavy funding.
However practically all of it’s owned, managed, and operated offshore. In accordance with the African IXP Affiliation, over 80 % of African web site visitors continues to be routed by way of Europe, even when each the sender and the receiver are on the continent.
This implies a easy e-mail from Kampala to Nairobi is prone to journey by way of London or Frankfurt earlier than arriving.
This isn’t a technical inevitability. It’s a failure of infrastructure sovereignty. Africa has fewer than 150 web alternate factors, and most are under-resourced.
Solely a handful of nations have functioning native cloud companies. Most African governments host their knowledge in foreign-owned knowledge centres or lease server house with none possession clauses. The continent accounts for over 17 % of the worldwide inhabitants however lower than 1 % of worldwide knowledge centre capability.
The African Union’s Knowledge Coverage Framework, adopted in 2022, calls on member states to determine authorized frameworks for knowledge possession, safety, and localisation. However implementation has been sluggish.
In observe, governments are signing agreements with international tech corporations sooner than they’re drafting legal guidelines. In lots of international locations, there isn’t any significant regulation of cloud infrastructure, satellite tv for pc companies, or platform habits.
Tech corporations function with near-total freedom.
They don’t simply serve African customers. They form the African web.
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When states do attempt to push again, they’re typically vilified. South Africa is without doubt one of the solely international locations that has drawn a transparent line. Its refusal to license Starlink with out fairness participation isn’t protectionism.
It’s precedent. As a result of it affirms that even satellites should reply to the legislation. That even essentially the most highly effective tech empires can not hover above African sovereignty.
The way forward for the African web isn’t just a query of protection. It’s a query of management. Who owns the platforms? Who shops the information? Who routes the site visitors? Who writes the code? These will not be technical questions. They’re political. They’re financial. And they’re pressing.
If we wish to keep away from turning into tenants in our personal digital economies, we should act with the readability of a continent that has seen this playbook earlier than.
We should construct regional web alternate factors. We should mandate native fairness in cloud infrastructure. We should tax satellite tv for pc operators pretty. We should refuse partnerships that supply entry with out accountability.
The empire has returned. It doesn’t put on khaki. It wears keycards. It doesn’t conquer with flags. It conquers with fiber and satellites and predictive fashions.
However Africa isn’t passive. We’ve got our personal ambitions. And if we insist on sovereignty, if we legislate it, construct it, defend it, the longer term is not going to be written in California. It is going to be written right here.
Within the soil. Within the legislation. Within the sky above us, on our personal phrases.
