Amazon ‘overtakes’ Musk in South Africa; its satellite internet service set to launch in 2027

NAIROBI – Amazon has announced the launch of its satellite internet services in South Africa by 2027, securing the first agreement of its kind on the continent following licence applications had already been submitted in countries such as Kenya. Amazon Leo, the group’s low-Earth orbit satellite division, has signed an agreement with local provider Herotel to roll out broadband services in one of Africa’s most industrialised economies.

The aim of the agreement is to expand network coverage in rural and under-served areas of South Africa, posing a challenge to Elon Musk’s Starlink in the very country where the South African-American billionaire was born. Starlink has already rolled out its services in 27 of the 55 countries under the umbrella of the African Union, but has become embroiled in a long-running dispute with Pretoria over the laws contained in the Black Economic Empowerment scheme, the framework of post-apartheid measures that impose a minimum quota of black shareholding on international investors.

Amazon Leo’s services will be integrated into Herotel’s existing platform, which currently serves a user base of 350,000 active users across 550 locations nationwide via fibre-optic and wireless networks. According to a statement released by Amazon, the aim of the agreement is primarily to reach the ‘millions of South Africans living on farms, in small towns and in rural communities’ who ‘do not yet have a reliable internet connection’ due to a lack of adequate infrastructure. The partnership, according to Jeff Bezos’s tech giant, builds on two decades of presence in South Africa and “Amazon Leo’s current growth in Africa”. The group is simultaneously working on a partnership with the mobile internet services company Vanu to expand mobile connectivity in rural areas of South Africa itself, although its growth ambitions appear to be aimed at the entire continental market. Amazon Leo has so far deployed 400 satellites, ‘enough to be used at certain latitudes’. Today, Africa has the lowest rate of internet access globally, with the World Bank estimating that 36 per cent of the population will be connected by 2025. The satellite services offered by Musk’s Starlink and now Amazon are regarded as one of the most effective technologies for widespread connectivity, bridging infrastructure gaps and facilitating the expansion of the network even to the continent’s least connected areas.