Starlink Is Now the Fastest ISP in 22 African Markets — and Amazon Is Coming
The battle to connect Africa is increasingly being fought from orbit. Starlink, the satellite-internet service operated by Elon Musk's SpaceX, now operates in 27 African countries — and new data shows it has become the continent's fastest internet provider almost everywhere it operates.
According to Ookla's Speedtest Intelligence, Starlink outperformed terrestrial internet service providers in 22 of 23 African markets measured, with median download speeds exceeding 50 megabits per second in 16 countries during the first quarter. In Eswatini, Botswana and Senegal, median speeds surpassed 100 Mbps — figures that comfortably beat most fibre and mobile offerings on the continent.
The expansion is continuing at pace. Côte d'Ivoire became the service's 27th African market with a launch this month, while Tanzania, Uganda, Angola and Namibia are slated to come online during 2026. Conspicuously absent from the committed list are some of the continent's biggest prizes: South Africa, Ethiopia and Sudan, where regulatory and political hurdles remain unresolved.
Capacity is set to leap again. The next-generation V3 satellites launching late this year are expected to deliver a tenfold increase in downlink capacity — headroom that matters on a continent where the service's popularity has, in some cities, already strained its network.
And competition is finally arriving. Amazon has secured a licence to roll out its low-Earth-orbit broadband service, Amazon Leo — formerly Project Kuiper — in Nigeria, its first African foothold, setting up a direct contest with Starlink in the continent's largest market. With Google also circling Africa's connectivity opportunity, the sky above the continent is becoming the hottest front in the race to bring its next hundreds of millions of users online.
