SpaceX's Starlink is active in Africa for the first time

Publish date: 2024-07-22
2023-01-31T11:35:15Z

Starlink, SpaceX's satellite internet service, has gone live in Nigeria, making it the first African country to receive service. 

The company announced the development on its Twitter page on Monday. 

Isa Ali Pantami, Nigeria's minister of communications and digital economy, celebrated the milestone in a social-media post.

He tweeted: "We have made it again. @SpaceX thank you for hosting me in your Headquarters, USA in December, 2022 to complete the logistics for the deployment."

SpaceX's CEO, Elon Musk, announced Starlink's plans to expand into Africa last year. In May, he said Starlink had been approved to provide broadband internet in Nigeria and Mozambique.

Starlink operates in dozens of countries and has more than one million users. However, Musk said the service is losing money.

Musk said in October that Starlink was suffering from a lack of funds, in response to a Twitter user who referenced CNN's report about SpaceX asking the Pentagon to pay for the service in Ukraine. He later said SpaceX had withdrawn the request for funding over Starlink in Ukraine. 

SpaceX has provided the country with thousands of Starlink dishes since Russia invaded in February. The billionaire said in October that only 10,630 out of 25,300 Starlink terminals in Ukraine were paying for service.

SpaceX did not immediately respond to Insider's request for further comment made outside normal working hours. 

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