this post was submitted on 26 Jan 2026
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Mesh back haul can get some distance connecting some communities aa well.
I agree though, the intercontental circuts need major captial (fiber/satilite). Ideally, to me, that would multinational orgnization building common infrastruture for the collective benefit. There is no kind of org though, that doesn't have some attempted leverage gain, so its more about creating a balance of powers then denying them.
So local nation states and coalitions, the UN, Internatiinal NGOs like the Linux Foundation, Alliance for Affordable Internet (A4AI), The Internet Society, local tech industry, aid from countries like the US, China, and EU members, and finally western Big Tech. These can all be stakeholders but it's important that putting the power into the individuals and communities is a major bulwark to the intentional creation of digital underclass.
I don't think community driven mesh networks are a realistically sized solution for the entire continental connectivity .
Certainly that would be best for the many nations of the continent. However, that hasn't happened and high speed internet as a basic utility has been commonplace as a utility in huge parts of the world already for decades. So without the ideal of a coalition of NGOs, are the under served nations on the African continent just supposed to go without instead of the tech companies building the infrastructure, and maintaining the ownership that comes with that, to bring these services as is detailed in the article?