👨🏿‍🚀TechCabal Daily – Kenya gets downgraded again

Zimbabwe’s recent switch to the gold-backed ZiG currency in April marked its sixth currency change since 2008. This drastic measure was necessitated by rampant hyperinflation, which reached a staggering 57.4% in April before the transition.

While the ZiG initially seemed to quell inflation, a severe drought has exacerbated food shortages, driving up prices and reigniting inflationary pressures. As a result, Zimbabwe recorded its first increase in inflation since the ZiG’s introduction in August, primarily due to soaring food costs.

Analysts predict that inflation will continue to rise until the country’s next harvest in March 2025, forcing the government and private millers to import grain to address food shortages.

They say the third time’s the charm, but South African “illegal” Starlink users will be reeling from this news. After three warnings, these users have now been cut off from the Elon Musk-owned satellite internet service provider (ISP).

To get licensed, the country’s telecoms regulator, the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA), mandates that 30% of all foreign companies, like Starlink, must be owned by historically disadvantaged groups. However, the satellite ISP couldn’t meet this requirement.

So, South Africans got creative. They started using roaming services. They bought Starlink kits, registered in other African countries where Starlink legally operated, from third-party resellers.

ICASA has since chased down these resellers to little success. Fearing regulation trouble, Starlink threatened to cut off more than 12,700 users that violated the usage terms. After warnings in February and April 2024, these users only got a slap on the wrist. This time, they’ve been cut off from the satellite service.

Getting operational clearance in African countries still eludes Starlink. Regulators want to control the content shared over Starlink. Since Starlink’s satellites don’t have a physical presence in the countries, it’s not possible to hold Starlink responsible for content transmitted over the signals.

This is what Kenya’s biggest telco, Safaricom, is pitching after it recently requested that regulators ban Starlink in Kenya. Critics have argued that it is anti-competitive. 

But for these blocked users in South Africa, only two options exist: they either move to the countries they’ve been tapping roaming access from or pray ICASA moves faster with its plan to fix the Starlink mess in Kenya; though it is demanding that foreign ISPs must provide access to updated data on its network.

Source:

* Data as of 22:50 PM WAT, August 26, 2024.

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