I am happy to announce that Tekedia Institute is introducing a new course titled “Satellite Broadband Age in Nigeria, Africa: Business Opportunities, Mapping New Markets and Rural Economies”. This is coming after the redesign which SpaceX Starlink is bringing to Nigeria and Africa. Just as GSM unlocked new business opportunities when it came, satellite broadband will seed new markets and advance rural economies across the continent. 

The course would be taught by himself and a veteran of the satellite industry. John Enoh founded a satellite company in Texas called Beeptool. And he currently uses SpaceX Starlink and can talk about it. Mine is coming hopefully next month.

Joseph Ibeh, a satellite industry analyst with Northern Sky Research joins the faculty and will be working with us on this course.

The focus of this course is to look at latent opportunities which satellite broadband could make evident. As always, I invite you to join us at our school. We bring uncommon freshness and relevance on business education in Africa. Register today and beat the early bird deadline for Tekedia Mini-MBA edition 4. The program begins June 7 to end Sept 1, 2021.

Tekedia Institute offers an innovation management 12-week program, optimized for business execution and growth, with digital operational overlay. It runs 100% online. The theme is Innovation, Growth & Digital Execution – Techniques for Building Category-King Companies. All contents are self-paced, recorded and archived which means participants do not have to be at any scheduled time to consume contents.

Good People, with the conclusion of Tekedia Mini-MBA edition 4 yesterday, the Certificates are now ready. Please email Admin for yours. You will receive a link to download it. I will be expecting your LinkedIn tag as you share. All certificates are automatically verifiable: just use the code on the certificate at tekedia.com/verify .

And the biggest part: from all samples, Tekedia Mini-MBA edition 4 received a rating of 4.9/5.0.  To our members here, we hope you feel the same way. Remember, you have access to all course contents till Feb 2022. So, take time and go through them again.

Plus: try to share your Lab 3 with your supervisor at work. One of us is relocating from Port Harcourt to Lagos after he presented his Lab 3 which he did on his company. Now, he has to execute the playbook in the corporate headquarters.

I want to thank all members for the opportunity to co-share and co-learn at Tekedia Institute. The next edition will be better as we introduce courses on AfCFTA, Digital Commerce, Pricing Strategies, Formation of missions, etc.

Congratulations again.

On June 8, 2017, Ndubuisi Ekekwe made a video and wrote:

“In today’s videocast, I make a case that Africa will enter the era of affordable broadband internet in 2022. That will be the year we will begin a new dawn of immersive connectivity where you can eat and surf all you can. Industry players will take off the Internet meter and then focus on service, experience and quality.

“From satellite broadband vendors to the MNCs with balloons and drones, the sector will become very competitive and service will drive growth. This has happened in the past – every decade, Africa experiences a major industrial transformation. We saw that in banking and voice telephony. 2020s, starting at 2022, will be the decade of immersive connectivity.”

As SpaceX Starlink arrives, that call is coming to pass! June 2017 seems to be a long time ago. I went to my village in Dec 2019 and the internet was bad. I was not happy. Luckily MTN came to the rescue, and broadband worked just fine while I was home. And before I left Ovim, three families offered free sites for masts. Imagine what broadband would do to Oriendu Market in Ovim. Imagine what it would do in your own village and community. This is the age of acceleration of value; a moment for optimism.

Watch that video again.

The generation’s finest innovator is coming to Nigeria with his product. Yes, Elon Musk and SpaceX are already in Abuja working with the industry regulator, Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), for permits to pipe broadband via satellite, bringing a new domain in the ICT space in the country. I have called that an “asymmetric disruption” because it offers a new order to what the terrestrial players like MTN, Glo and Airtel offer. In 2017, I wrote an article titled “2022 – Africa’s Year Of Affordable Broadband Internet And Immersive Connectivity”. That seems to be on the money!

In today’s videocast, I make a case that Africa will enter the era of affordable broadband internet in 2022. That will be the year we will begin a new dawn of immersive connectivity where you can eat and surf all you can. Industry players will take off the Internet meter and then focus on service, experience and quality. From satellite broadband vendors to the MNCs with balloons and drones, the sector will become very competitive and service will drive growth. This has happened in the past – every decade, Africa experiences a major industrial transformation. We saw that in banking and voice telephony. 2020s, starting at 2022, will be the decade of immersive connectivity.

People, the game is changing and customers have a promise ahead – better quality at lower price. As that happens,  we will see how the telco industry body lobbies: expect a new dimension of bank-led and telco-led mobile money debate to resurface, but now GSM-led and satellite-led broadband connectivity in Nigeria. Yes, would telcos expect SpaceX Starlink to come into the open party just as they have expected the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to allow them to join the mobile money redesign in Nigeria. The argument was that telcos would improve the mobile money customer experience, better than banks, due to their better distribution outlets. 

But here, since Starlink is coming from satellite, I do think it has a huge chance to also improve the experiences of customers on broadband connectivity, unbounded and unconstrained by the usual terrestrial challenges.

People, everything will be tested and it all depends on what the regulator does with SpaceX, because if you allow Starlink carelessly, these telcos will fade. The telcos which have made a case for mobile money, that the government should allow the best to win, have an opportunity to tell Nigerians if they truly believe in a totally free market system in our telecommunication sector.

SpaceX team in Nigeria

But this is what I expect the telcos to say: the Nigerian telecom sector should be GSM-led, and not Satellite-led, and by that, even if SpaceX Starlink comes, it must be mandated to pipe its data through partnerships with GSM-based broadband providers. The telco lobby will argue for protecting jobs and investments. It would be a fierce one.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX Starlink Arrives Nigeria, Meets NCC for Permit