Elon Musk's STARLINK Will Save Countless African Lives

Starlink is a satellite internet constellation operated by American aerospace company SpaceX,[3] providing satellite Internet access coverage to over 54 countries. It also aims for global mobile phone service after 2023.[4] SpaceX started launching Starlink satellites in 2019. As of May 2023, Starlink consists of over 4,000 mass-produced small satellites in low Earth orbit (LEO),[5] which communicate with designated ground transceivers. In total, nearly 12,000 satellites are planned to be deployed, with a possible later extension to 42,000. SpaceX announced reaching more than 1 million subscribers in December 2022[6] and 1.5 million subscribers in May 2023.[7]

The SpaceX satellite development facility in Redmond, Washington, houses the Starlink research, development, manufacturing, and orbit control teams. The cost of the decade-long project to design, build, and deploy the constellation was estimated by SpaceX in May 2018 to be at least US$10 billion.[8] SpaceX expects more than $30 billion in revenue by 2025 from its satellite constellation, while revenues from its launch business were expected to reach $5 billion in the same year.[9][10]

Astronomers have raised concerns about the effect the constellation can have on ground-based astronomy and how the satellites will add to an already congested orbital environment.[11][12] SpaceX has attempted to mitigate astronomy concerns by implementing several upgrades to Starlink satellites aimed at reducing their brightness during operation.[13] The satellites are equipped with krypton or argon-fueled Hall thrusters which allow them to de-orbit at the end of their life. Additionally, the satellites are designed to autonomously and smoothly avoid collisions based on uplinked tracking data.

The Internet in Africa is limited by a lower penetration rate when compared to the rest of the world. Measurable parameters such as the number of ISP subscriptions, overall number of hosts, IXP-traffic, and overall available bandwidth are indicators that Africa is far behind the "digital divide". Moreover, Africa itself exhibits an inner digital divide, with most Internet activity and infrastructure concentrated in South Africa, Morocco, Egypt as well as smaller economies like Mauritius and Seychelles. In general, only 24.4% of the African population have access to the Internet, as of 2018.[2] Only 0.4% of the African population has a fixed-broadband subscription. The majority of internet users use it through mobile broadband.[3][4][5][6]

During the COVID-19 pandemic, many people who were not connected to the internet lost access to health care and education. Production in all industries was seriously harmed. [3][7][8][9]

While the telecommunications market in Africa is still in its early stages of development, it is also one of the fastest-growing in the world. In the 2000s, mobile telephone service in Africa has been rising, and mobile telephone use is now substantially more widespread than fixed line telephony. Telecommunication companies in Africa are looking at Broadband Wireless Access technologies as the key to make Internet available to the population at large. Projects are being completed that aim at the realization of Internet backbones that might help cut the cost of bandwidth in African countries.

The International Telecommunication Union has held the first Connect the World meeting in Kigali, Rwanda (in October 2007) as a demonstration that the development of telecommunications in Africa is considered a key intermediate objective for the fulfillment of the Millennium Development Goals.

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