CAPE TOWN, South Africa — Amazon announced Wednesday that it plans to bring its satellite internet service, called Amazon Leo, to South Africa in 2027 — apparently getting ahead of Elon Musk’s competing Starlink service in the country where Musk was born.
The company, founded by Jeff Bezos, said it will team up with South African internet provider Herotel to offer the service to the nation’s 62 million residents. Amazon described it as the company’s first satellite internet partnership on the African continent. No details about the financial terms of the deal were released at the time of the announcement.
The news comes after Musk, widely recognized as the world’s wealthiest person, publicly blasted the South African government over its regulations. Musk has claimed that rules requiring foreign communications companies to give a minority ownership stake in their local operations to Black or other non-white investors have blocked Starlink from entering the market — and he has accused the government of racial discrimination against him because he is white.
Those affirmative action policies were designed to create economic opportunities for people who were shut out under South Africa’s former apartheid system, which enforced white minority rule.
South Africa’s government has expressed support for the Amazon agreement. Communications Minister Solly Malatsi appeared alongside Amazon and Herotel representatives to formally announce the deal.
Amazon first launched its low-orbit internet satellites last year and currently has more than 390 of them in operation. By comparison, Starlink — which launched its first operational satellites back in 2019 — now has more than 10,000 satellites circling the globe. While Starlink has expanded into roughly two dozen African nations, Musk has declined to comply with South Africa’s ownership requirements, keeping the service out of that country.
Amazon also said Wednesday that the South Africa deal marks the beginning of a broader push across the African continent. As part of that effort, the company plans to work with Vanu Inc., a Lexington, Massachusetts-based firm that specializes in providing mobile internet access in developing nations.
Africa represents a significant potential market for satellite internet services. The continent is home to more than 1.5 billion people, many of whom live in rural or remote areas where traditional fixed internet connections are not available.
