Abu Dhabi’s Space42 is eyeing expansion into Africa, where broad swaths of the continent still have no internet.
A competitor to Elon Musk’s Starlink, Space42 has already connected schools and clinics in South Africa and Zimbabwe and is in early discussions with the African Union Development Agency and existing partners like Microsoft and data center firm Esri, as well as other financial firms, to raise funds, CEO Hasan Al Hosani told Bloomberg. The conversations are in early stages and there is no dollar-figure yet, he added.
A unit of Abu Dhabi artificial intelligence firm G42, Space42 was valued at $4 billion when it was created from a merger of two state-backed companies — specialists in satellites and geospatial mapping — last year. But it has a long way to go to catch up to Starlink: Whereas Space42 has eight satellites in orbit, Musk’s firm has around 8,000.
