South Africa's The Star published on 21 December 2025 an article titled "Empowering Africa: How China's Tech Cooperation Fuels Progress" by Gideon Chitanga.
The article argues that Chinese government and companies have become critical partners in the development of Africa's digital systems and information and communications technology. For example, Huawei has constructed an estimated 70 percent of Africa's 4-G networks.
Swarajya, an Indian right-wing monthly magazine, published on 23 July 2025 an article titled "Xi Jinping's Starlink Challenge Stalls as China's Satellite Constellation Projects Face Launch Bottlenecks; India's Private Sector Advances."
Elon Musk's Starlink, the pioneering satellite internet service, faces competition from China's state-led Guowang and the Shanghai-backed Qianfan. Musk's Starlink has launched more than 7,000 satellites providing connectivity to over five million customers in more than 100 countries.
Both of the Chinese projects face delays caused by rocket shortages, sluggish deployment rates, and internal competition. As of July 2025, Guowang had launched only about 40 satellites in a program that envisages a network of over 13,000 that will provide high-speed internet for civilian and military use.
Qianfan, also known as SpaceSail and G60 Starlink, is backed by the Shanghai municipal government and plans to have 15,000 satellites by 2030. To date, it has launched about 90 satellites and at least 17 of them have failed to reach their intended orbits. State-backed Guowang receives launch priority, repeatedly pushing Qianfan to the sidelines.
These problems in China's satellite programs may be alleviated, however, as Xi Jinping has reportedly instructed the People's Liberation Army to accelerate space-based communication systems in order to build a Chinese alternative to Starlink.
Comment: All of this has important implications for the Global South, and especially Africa, where Starlink has been slow to take hold and Chinese competition could challenge it.
Rest of the World posted on 9 August 2021 an article titled "The Race to Build Africa's 5G Networks Is Entangled in a U.S. Push to Cut Huawei's Dominance" by Abubakar Idris.
The article looks at US telecoms vender Parallel Wireless to break into the 5G market in Africa. Parallel Wireless is based on open source technology called Open RAN, which promises to allow telecom operators to use different venders for different pieces of their 4G and 5G networks. The US is pushing the global internet into one that is US dominated and another that is China dominated. Parallel Wireless and Open RAN are gaining market share in Africa but face severe competition from China's Huawei and ZTE.
