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For years, Ugandans in rural areas have lived with a frustrating reality: patchy mobile data, unreliable fibre rollouts, and the sense that fast internet is a privilege reserved for Kampala. That may be about to change.
Uganda is in the final stages of licensing Starlink, Elon Musk’s satellite internet service, to operate in the country. President Yoweri Museveni has personally directed regulators to move quickly, and a joint government-Starlink launch event is being planned, with Museveni expected to preside over it. For a technology deal, that level of presidential involvement says a lot about how seriously Kampala is taking this.
How it got here
The story behind this deal stretches back to December last year, when Museveni met Starlink representatives Ben MacWilliams and Brandi Oliver at a meeting arranged by Uganda’s UN Ambassador Adonia Ayebare and Ambassador Popp. Museveni came away impressed. “I appreciate their commitment to providing low-cost internet in hard-to-reach areas,” he said publicly afterwards, adding simply: “They are welcome.”
That December meeting planted the seed. Earlier this month, a follow-up session was held at State House Entebbe, this time bringing together Starlink executives, Ambassador Ayebare, and senior figures from the Ministry of ICT and the Uganda Communications Commission. By the end of it, Museveni had given a direct instruction: facilitate Starlink’s entry and give them a license.
Officials are now drafting the formal licensing agreement that would authorize SpaceX’s satellite broadband unit to operate commercially in Uganda.
Why this is a bigger deal than it looks
Starlink is not a typical telecom company. It delivers internet from a constellation of low-Earth orbit satellites, which means it can reach places where laying fibre cable is too expensive and where mobile towers have never been built. Islands on Lake Victoria. Remote districts in Karamoja. Mountain communities in Kigezi. These are exactly the kinds of places that Uganda’s existing internet infrastructure has consistently failed to serve.
The service already operates in several African countries, including Kenya, Rwanda, Nigeria and South Africa, where users have reported download speeds that rival urban fibre connections.
The bumpy road that came before
This approval has not been straightforward. For much of the past two years, Uganda Communications Commission treated Starlink terminals as unauthorized equipment, and there were active restrictions on their importation. Some Ugandans were quietly using the service anyway, importing dishes through informal channels, but they did so without any legal protection or official support.
The presidential directive marks a clean break from that period of regulatory uncertainty. A formal license will give Starlink the standing to market openly, set up local support structures, and price competitively.
What comes next
The licensing agreement is still being finalized, and no official date has been announced for the launch event. But with Museveni’s name attached to the rollout, the political will is clearly there. The remaining question is how quickly the UCC and ICT Ministry can turn a presidential directive into signed paperwork.
For Uganda’s millions of underserved internet users, that paperwork cannot come soon enough.
