Starlink has switched on service in Equatorial Guinea. The move makes the oil rich Central African nation the 30th country on the continent with active satellite internet. SpaceX’s satellite unit spent months in talks with officials in Malabo before the launch went ahead.
Equatorial Guinea’s road to Starlink was not quick. In March, officials authorized a study to bring the service into the country’s telecoms rules. That review followed an audit of an existing digital terrestrial television project. Vice President Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue had earlier pushed for a narrower deal that limited Starlink access to the oil sector. Wider commercial rollout only got approval after that.
This launch keeps up a pace Starlink has held since it entered Nigeria in early 2023. The company doubled its African footprint in 2024. It kept adding new markets through 2025 and into 2026, including Liberia, Niger, Somalia, Guinea Bissau, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Lesotho, Chad, the Central African Republic, and Senegal.
SEE ALSO:Starlink Pushes South Africa to Ease Ownership Rules
For Equatorial Guinea, this matters because internet access outside Malabo and Bata has long been weak. Fiber and mobile towers have struggled to reach oil producing regions and rural communities. Starlink skips that problem entirely. A dish and a router link straight to satellites overhead. Analysts expect early demand to come from schools, health providers, and agritech ventures working outside the main cities.
Full pricing for the Equatorial Guinea launch was not yet public at the time of writing. Still, recent African launches offer a guide. Standard hardware kits across the continent have generally cost between 400 and 450 dollars. Monthly residential plans have ranged from about 30 to 65 dollars, depending on data caps and local currency. Most new markets also get a 30-day trial with no long-term contract.
Starlink’s African growth has not been smooth everywhere. South Africa still blocks the company over local ownership rules. New telecoms licensees there must meet a black ownership threshold, and Starlink has resisted that so far. Namibia has floated a similar 51 percent local ownership rule. Morocco’s regulators are still working through their own licensing process, one that may stretch into 2026.
Equatorial Guinea took a different route. Its government negotiated access terms early instead of insisting on rigid ownership rules. That approach got the service online faster than in markets stuck in regulatory disputes.
Starlink now covers 30 African countries. Gabon, Cameroon, Congo, and Uganda are next in line, based on the company’s own rollout plans for 2026. If those launches happen on schedule, satellite internet could soon reach roughly two out of every three African nations. That would be a remarkable shift from just three years ago, when Nigeria stood alone as the only live market on the continent.
