bmqpo

And most of those unofficial terminals were in the big cities by upper middle class folks and not rural areas. As at the end of June 2026, Starlink had just about 90k subscribers in a country of over 200 million people after over 40 months of official operation.

Those are exceptions and can’t be used to characterise an entire continent. I have lived in areas of the continent with poor security and jihadist violence yet year in year out, fibre access kept expanding and getting cheaper. The corruption don’t stop rollouts, just make them more expensive and are not particularly to African countries.

The example in the article is contrived. Not many people can afford to pay for Starlink in rural Nigeria. You can also take a look at MTN Nigeria coverage map to see their Fibre and wireless deployments at https://coverage.mtn.ng/. (Yes, service isn’t yet in Ekiti, but will eventually get there as it’s already in neighbouring states). Compared to a few years ago, fibre penetration is ramping up from tier 1 and tier 2 service providers. Also, fibre services (when available ) typically start at about $20 per month compared to Starlink at $50 and you need an upfront investment of around $400 to buy the kit.

How many countries do you think have local warlords problems in Africa to negatively affect fibre deployments.