The world is in the throes of a fierce digital geopolitics. A throwback to President Ronald Reagan’s pet project, Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) in the 1980s — lampooned as “Star Wars” — the new geopolitics of digital connectivity casts a long shadow over the future of Africa’s economies, security and sovereignty.

In a sense, America’s 21st century “star war” is unfolding as a war of technologies. It is a head-to-head combat between the satellite internet technology and the fifth generation, or 5G, wireless cellular technology.

Having lost the fierce race for the 5G to rising China, the United States is harnessing its satellite internet capacities to recapture its digital hegemony. There are reasons galore why China has won the 5G race, including strategic government investments, technological superiority, and an unmatched market scale.

Today, Chinese techno-giants, Huawei and ZTE, are top in the pecking order of global supply chain for 5G equipment and software. Moreover, Beijing has four times as much licensed midband spectrum as America, which now ranks 13th of 15 leading nations in licensed midband spectrum for 5G and 6G.

America’s National Security Strategy, released by President Joe Biden’s Administration in October 2022, prioritizes “Shaping the rules of the road for technology” to deal “with the challenges…posed by our strategic competitors” (p.23). As a result, Washington has taken full advantage of its clear edge in the satellite internet technology to reassert its digital hegemony.

Discernibly, the real beachhead in America’s 21st century ‘Star War’ is SpaceX, a California-based spacecraft manufacturing company founded in 2002 by the South Africa-born American billionaire, Elon Musk. In 2019, SpaceX unveiled its signature Internet company, Starlink.

Lucrative contracts

Starlink is utilising Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites to provide global broadband, high-speed, low-latency and low-cost internet service coverage targeting the world’s remotest areas where fixed or mobile network connectivity is absent. Starlink has licenses to deploy around 12,000 satellites, expected to increase to a mega-constellation over 34,000 platforms. 

Starlink owes its meteoric rise in the internet market to lucrative contracts and subsidies by the US government and its agencies. A case in point is a $885.5 million the firm received from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in December 2020 to provide high-speed satellite-based broadband internet service to rural areas in 35 American states.

Further, after Russia invaded Ukraine and destroyed its cellular phone and internet networks in February 2022, America called in the firm to re-connect the Ukrainian military to the internet to continue fighting. The US Department of Defence has met Starlink’s costs through a contract with SpaceX. 

In 2022, ahead of its entry into Africa’s internet market, SpaceX unveiled its Starshield, a program designed along the line of Starlink, to erase the company’s image as a tool of the America security agencies and restore its civilian face.

Starlink’s muscle in the internet marketplace has grown, rising from a million subscribers in December 2022 to 2.3 million by 2023. On January 30, 2023, SpaceX tweeted, “Starlink is now available in Nigeria – the first African country to receive service.”

As of September 2024, Starlink has entered eight African countries, and plans to be in 25 out of 54 African countries. In July 2023, the company entered Kenya, introducing a system that allows customers to acquire the necessary equipment through installments. As a result, the company’s subscribers have grown from 405 in July 2023 to 4,808 by March 2024, according to the Communication Authority of Kenya. 

Digital autonomy

Opinion on what Starlink’s advent in Africa means is sharply divided. While some digital activists hail the advent of the American firm as “a big game changer”, some governments and local internet companies are worried that Africa risks become an exclusive sphere of American ‘digital colonialism’, with dreadful consequences for its economies, security and sovereignty. 

In Kenya, the entry of StarLink could potentially disrupt the operations, market share and revenue streams of Safaricom, Kenya's largest telecom company, the nation’s main internet provider, contributor to the economy and the fulcrum of its strategic communication sector.

As of 2023, Safaricom employed over 1.2 million people, 236,674 directly and 1,159,309 indirectly. Last year, the company contributed Sh909.5 billion to the Kenyan economy. Its impact on the economy is approximately 15 times greater than the financial profit. Also at risk are job losses in the telecom sector, particularly among small Internet Service providers.

The country also faces potential decline in investments in vital infrastructure by local telecom companies. Kenya could become totally dependent on foreign satellite systems for its crucial security and strategic communications. Losing control over critical communication infrastructure could undermine national defense and security, which are increasingly tied to technology. Regionally, the dominance of M-PESA, which has presence in 11 countries, could become severely contested.

Africa should collate and curate lessons from the way other regions are responding to the new geo-strategic challenge caused by the digital geopolitics. The European Union (EU) has its IRIS project, a new space-based secure connectivity system to address the need for high-speed internet broadband to cope with connectivity in remote zones and offer enhanced communication services to its citizens, businesses and governmental users.

Since 2023, China has fast-tracked the development of its own satellite internet constellation, run by Chinasat, the brand name of communications satellites operated by China Satellite Communications. While entertaining licenses for two America satellite connectivity companies, Starlink and Project Kuiper, India is supporting to the hilt its local flagship companies, Oneweb and JioSpaceFiber, to prevail in the strategic space sector.

Africa needs a comprehensive strategy to protect its economies and secure its digital autonomy and sovereignty. E-colonization in all its forms and guises is a big no-no.

Professor Peter Kagwanja is the Chief Executive at the Africa Policy Institute. He teaches a doctoral level course: “Science & Technology in International Relations” at the Department of Diplomacy & International Studies, University of Nairobi