Sierra Leone has become the 3rd West African country to launch Starlink, the satellite broadband service launched by California-based SpaceX, the spacecraft company founded by Elon Musk.
This development was announced by the Minister of Information Chernor Bah during the Ministry of Communications and Innovation ‘Tech Summit’ held in Freetown on Tuesday, June 11, 2024.
The country now joins Nigeria, Kanya and Zambia as West African nations connected to Starlink. According to the map displayed on Starlink’s website, an additional 19 African countries are scheduled for launch by 2024.
At the beginning of 2023, Sierra Leone had an internet penetration rate of only 21.2%, leaving approximately 6.85 million people without internet access. Additionally, the country’s median fixed internet connection speed stands at 11.60 megabytes per second (Mbps), considerably lower than the global average of 58 Mbps.
Starlink is expected to reduce the cost of internet services and make them accessible to every Sierra Leonean.
2023 marks the year when Musk’s Starlink makes its debut on the African continent. In January 2023, Nigeria became the first African country to experience Musk’s satellite-based internet service. Since then, it has become available in nine African countries.
Compared to traditional internet satellites, which are positioned approximately 35,000 km from Earth, Starlink’s Low-Earth Orbit satellites orbit at a much closer distance of about 550 kilometers from the planet’s surface. This proximity enables them to provide coverage to remote parts of the continent at no extra cost compared to land-based telecom towers and subsea fiber cables.