Liberia welcome Starlink to its shores expanding its digital capacity

By Daanyaal Matthews 

The Liberian government has signed a license agreement with Elon Musk’s Starlink Liberia LLC. This follows numerous meetings between the South African born billionaire and Liberian President Joseph Boakai, which could see the African state having universal access to the internet while it presently sits with an internet penetration rate of 33.6%, indicating that, on average, three out of ten Liberian citizens have access to the internet. 

Speaking on VOC’s Newsbeat, Dr. Paul Kariuki, Executive Director at the Democracy Development Programme of the University of Kwa-Zulu Natal, argued this is a monumental milestone for the West African state. 

“It’s an interesting development given that the African country is looking towards being one of the countries to be at the forefront of digital communication and transform the economy into the digital economy they think they should be and catch up to the rest of the world,” theorized Kariuki. 

The move towards Starlink has been rapidly growing on the continent, with eight African states having the service fully functional. However, South Africa, which is often hallmarked as one of the many leaders in the African continent, especially in digital communications, has stagnated on its introduction, which, according to Kariuki, is a major hindrance for the development of SA, especially since the nation has a large portion of its populace disconnected from the global web. 

“The fact that we still have a huge population that hasn’t been serviced with digital access tells us that there is a problem that someone must solve. Now people often jump to conclusions if they don’t know what to do, but this man [Elon Musk] is exploring a possibility of bringing the majority of countries, if not all the countries on our continent, at least to 100% coverage,” stressed Kariuki. 

Click here to listen to the full interview: 

VOCNews

Photo: Pexels.com

Picture of Daanyaal Matthews
Daanyaal Matthews

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