While the debate on Starlink continues, many remain offline
Image: Jonathan Raa/NurPhoto/AFP
While billionaires, politicians and regulators continue to battle over Starlink, millions of ordinary South Africans remain stuck offline, including learners in more than 16,000 public schools without internet access.
The fight over Elon Musk’s satellite internet company has become part of a much bigger problem: a widening digital divide that continues to leave rural communities disconnected from education, healthcare and economic opportunities.
The latest clash came after communications regulator ICASA pushed back against efforts by Communications Minister Solly Malatsi to ease licensing rules that could help Musk’s satellite internet company enter the South African market.
But beyond the political noise around BEE and foreign ownership, government data indicates that South Africa’s internet inequality is dire, especially in schools, clinics and poorer provinces.
In September 2025, Parliament heard that more than 16,000 South African public schools still lacked connectivity for teaching and learning.
The problem extends beyond schools.
According to Statistics South Africa’s latest General Household Survey, 82.1% of households had some form of internet access in 2024, mostly through mobile phones, but only 17.4% had fixed internet access at home.
Rural provinces are still lagging behind urban centres. Fixed internet access at home stood at just 7.0% in Limpopo and 5.6% in Mpumalanga, compared to 44.9% in the Western Cape.
The same data showed that households in the Eastern Cape and Northern Cape had among the lowest overall internet access levels in the country.
Government’s flagship broadband programme, SA Connect, was originally designed to close these gaps. The Department of Communications and Digital Technologies says Phase 1 of the project aimed to connect 6,135 government facilities, including schools, clinics, police stations and post offices, across underserved rural municipalities.
More than a decade after SA Connect was approved in 2013, rollout frustrations remain widespread.
The connectivity gap is also becoming an economic issue.
Research published in 2025 on digital access in sub-Saharan Africa found that while broadband coverage technically reaches much of the population, actual internet use remains far lower because of affordability and infrastructure barriers.
This comes as other African countries are accelerating satellite internet partnerships to close rural connectivity gaps.
Reuters reported in late 2025 that Vodacom Group signed an agreement with Starlink to expand satellite broadband services across Africa, specifically targeting difficult-to-reach rural regions where traditional towers are expensive to build.
However, concerns mount regarding regulation, astronomical interference, and national sovereignty.
The longer South Africa’s policy deadlock continues, the harder it may become to close the country’s rural digital divide.
For many communities, the debate is becoming less about Elon Musk and more about whether schools, clinics and households can access modern internet services at all.
IOL