The Global South's Digital Future Must Not Be Left to Bezos and Musk

Amazon has announced that its Leo satellite internet service will enter the South African market in 2027 through a partnership with Herotel, the country's largest fixed internet provider. This is Leo's first deal in Africa, aimed at connecting households and businesses beyond the reach of fiber and fixed wireless networks. Herotel serves over 350,000 customers in more than 550 towns, giving Amazon access to agricultural and rural areas where distance, terrain, and sparse populations make traditional networks costly.

Amazon is entering a market transformed by satellite internet. Starlink, the SpaceX service run by Elon Musk, served 10.3 million subscribers in 164 countries and territories with roughly 9,000 satellites as of March, reflecting rapid expansion in Africa, Latin America, and Asia.

Satellite services can bring connectivity to underserved regions, but whether poor households can afford them remains an open question. However, the promise of universal connectivity carries a profound risk: communities connected by these services may become dependent on foreign corporations that control the infrastructure their economies and public life increasingly rely on.

Internet access shapes who can study, work, do business, bank, communicate, receive public services, and participate in political life. Network owners decide where they operate, what they charge, and the terms of access. In September 2024, Starlink initially refused a Brazilian court order to block X, another Musk-controlled company, before reversing course. The incident showed how essential networks can give private companies extraordinary leverage over governments.

Amazon and SpaceX are deeply tied to U.S. national security infrastructure. SpaceX won a national security launch contract in 2025, expected to cover 28 missions worth $5.9 billion from fiscal 2025 to 2029, while Amazon Web Services (AWS) provides secure cloud services to U.S. defense and intelligence agencies. Their infrastructure is already intertwined with U.S. state power. Entrusting essential networks in poor countries to them would extend U.S. strategic power into their economies, institutions, and daily lives.

Of the 2.2 billion people without internet access, 96% live in low- and middle-income countries. In Africa, only 36% of the population uses the internet, dropping to 21% in rural areas. Fixed broadband, where available, costs more than a quarter of average monthly income in low-income countries.

Satellite networks reach places forgotten by fiber and mobile operators, but they cannot alone overcome the cost of data, devices, and electricity. In Nigeria, Starlink hiked monthly household fees by 50% in April 2025, from 38,000 to 57,000 naira ($28 to $42), after an earlier attempt to nearly double prices met regulatory backlash.

A company setting those terms is exercising political power without democratic accountability. This combination of foreign infrastructure and unaccountable power has colonial precedents in Africa.

From 1890 to 1898, a Belgian company built the Matadi-Leopoldville railway to ship rubber and ivory from King Leopold II's Congo Free State to Europe. Congolese communities were forced to harvest the resources the railway carried, while the colonial regime controlled the line and profited.

Facebook later replicated that logic in the digital sphere.

On February 10, 2015, Facebook and Reliance Communications launched Internet.org in six Indian states, later rebranded Free Basics. Selected news, health, education, and jobs websites were free of data charges, while the broader internet remained paid. For millions of poor Indians coming online for the first time, Facebook risked becoming the internet itself, while local businesses and media outside its portal competed against free services.

That prospect sparked a nationwide campaign for net neutrality. India's regulator suspended Free Basics in December 2015, then banned content-based data pricing in February 2016. The ruling stopped Facebook from turning poverty into the power to decide what people could read, learn, watch, and buy online.

India's ruling did not slow Free Basics elsewhere. By July 2019, the service was reportedly available in 30 African countries, including Ghana, Kenya, and Nigeria. In Ghana, about 70% of services were based outside Africa, while major local news sites were absent. In Kenya, users could not access eCitizen or Huduma Kenya, gateways for IDs, birth certificates, and business registration. Facebook's "free" internet was clearly foreign and incomplete.

Free Basics gave Facebook control over a single gateway to the internet. But corporate influence over connectivity has expanded from services to transmission infrastructure. Meta leads a consortium building 2Africa, a cable system connecting 33 countries in Africa, Europe, and Asia. The Pearls extension is expected to bring the system to roughly 45,000 kilometers. Google's Equiano cable links Europe with Togo, Nigeria, Namibia, and South Africa.

Amazon plans to connect Leo directly to AWS, allowing governments and businesses to move data into its storage, analytics, and AI services. In April, Amazon agreed to acquire Globalstar, a U.S. satellite communications company, a deal that would provide satellites, spectrum rights, and infrastructure for direct-to-device services.

The danger does not depend on Amazon owning everything that flows through Leo. It arises when a foreign corporation provides multiple layers of digital infrastructure that governments and businesses rely on: connectivity, cloud storage, analytics, and AI. Data can travel abroad, be processed into commercial intelligence, and return as paid services. When the Global South provides users and markets, while ownership, profits, and control sit in the U.S., connectivity becomes digital colonialism.

Starlink illustrates how fast such power accumulates. By April 2025, three years after entering Brazil, Starlink held nearly four-fifths of the country's consumer satellite broadband market with over 362,000 individual subscribers.

Yet Brazil has maintained public control over part of its satellite infrastructure. Its SGDC satellite has connected over 12,000 public points, including 9,380 rural schools and 356 health facilities. This shows foreign providers can complement public infrastructure without replacing it.

In southern Africa, Namibia has acted before Starlink became essential. Its regulator rejected the company's license and spectrum applications in March because its 100% foreign-owned subsidiary did not meet the 51% local ownership requirement and other compliance criteria, then dismissed a reconsideration request in June.

Across the border, South Africa illustrates both the role and limits of local participation. While Starlink has not been licensed, Amazon plans to enter via a partnership with Herotel. Under the deal, Amazon will provide satellite capacity, while the South African firm handles customer service, installation, and field operations.

South Africa's Electronic Communications Act requires individual communications license holders to have at least 30% ownership by historically disadvantaged groups. In December, the government directed the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA) to recognize equity equivalent investment programs as an alternative to direct ownership. But ICASA said in May that the act would need amendment before such programs can be fully recognized.

Herotel will keep local distribution and service, but Amazon will control the satellites, software, and Leo's corporate strategy. Local participation gives South Africans a role in the business, not control over the underlying network.

Greater public control must come with democratic safeguards. In 2025, at least 313 internet shutdowns were recorded in 52 countries, including 30 in 15 African countries, cutting access during elections, protests, and conflicts. No company or government should be allowed to suspend legitimate access without transparent legal authority, independent review, and effective remedies. Digital sovereignty must belong to the people, not the ruling party.

Licenses should require social tariffs, universal service contributions, net neutrality, binding technology transfer, and rules on cross-border data flows. Providers of essential services must ensure continuity, while regulators should ban exclusive deals that lock local operators into foreign networks. Beneficial ownership disclosure must ensure local equity rules benefit communities, not politically connected intermediaries.

Licensing can limit corporate power but cannot create ownership. Because satellite networks and tech companies operate across borders, single-country regulation is insufficient. The African Union should use its Digital Compact and Data Policy Framework to develop common satellite licensing rules with the African Telecommunications Union on spectrum and competition.

Latin America's eLAC2026 and ASEAN's Digital Masterplan 2030 can support similar standards. Governments should pool demand and direct regional development banks to fund publicly controlled fiber, internet exchange points, data centers, and shared satellite capacity.

Amazon Leo and Starlink may help connect communities abandoned by governments and traditional operators, but connectivity must expand freedom rather than transfer power to foreign corporations. The Global South's digital future must not belong to Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk.