Where to Launch Next?

Let me take my crystal ball and predict which African country goes live next. Jokes aside, some interesting regulatory movement is happening across Africa on LEO right now. Three countries, three very different postures.

Tanzania: TCRA just completed a visit to Kenya’s regulator to benchmark against Kenya’s Unified Licensing Framework, including the satellite-specific licence category. Notably, Tanzania is already the first African country to publish a dedicated D2D framework. Now it is studying the market that moved first and lining up.

In the meantime, Equatorial Guinea approved first and is asking questions later. Starlink is live there now, running on a provisional approval from the Vice President’s office while GITGE writes the actual terms around a service that is already selling.

Uganda already answered the regulatory question the hard way. The Uganda Communications Commission ordered grey-market Starlink terminals shut down on 1 January, right before a general election. It took more than four months before Starlink and UCC signed an MoU and a five-year licence, and commercial service did not actually go live until September.

The same pressure is everywhere: LEO capacity is arriving faster than most regulatory regimes were built for. Three governments, three different tolerances for moving before the rules are finished.

If you are planning market entry, the real question is which of these scenarios you are actually walking into. The entry plan looks completely different depending on the answer. And here I am, waiting for the next market to go live.