Starlink remains outlawed in Cameroon amid security, sovereignty fears.

For users once cut off from the internet for over three months and who often bear the brunt of shaky and volatile connectivity, the arrival of Starlink — SpaceX’s satellite internet service — is a welcome relief. They are able to seamlessly carry out work, connect with business partners, video-call relatives abroad, amongst others. 

To Victor Mbarika, a US-based Cameroonian ICT expert, many companies and people, including some government workers and offices, are already using Elon Musk’s Starlink in hiding.

“Legalisation will expand internet access, encourage competition, help lower prices, and generate tax revenue for African nations,” Mbarika argued in a post on Facebook.

However, Starlink remains outlawed in several African countries, including Cameroon, despite its promise of widening internet access and driving down cost.

As the technology was quietly being adopted in defiance of existing regulations, Cameroon’s customs authority swiftly moved in 2024 to systematically seize Starlink kits at its ports of entry. Back then, officials warned that such technology, which delivers unrestricted, ultra-fast internet connectivity, falls outside the oversight of the telecoms regulator and is therefore seen as a potential threat to national security.

Customs officers have since been relentless on their crackdown, with a notable seizure earlier this year of 29 Starlink kits at Ekok frontier post, on the southwestern border with Nigeria. 

Starlink’s hidden security risk

Stanislav Kazanov, Head of Governance, Risk Management, and Compliance at Innowise, believes the seizure demonstrates that an orbital broadcast cannot be disrupted using traditional methods of border enforcement. 

“Regulatory bodies are realising that their historic licensing frameworks, which were developed for physical tower and fibre optic networks are inadequate for a satellite system that provides high-speed bandwidth to a consumer device through an easy software update,” Kazanov says.

Cameroon’s major conundrum with Starlink has been national security concerns. The central African nation has been battling to contain an Islamist insurgency waged by Boko Haram and Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) in the north, while fighting armed separatists in its English-speaking regions. In the east, it also has to deal with rebels from next-door Central African Republic who often crossover and kidnap citizens for ransom. 

A government official, who asked not to be named because they were not mandated to speak to the press, said armed separatists in the North West and South West regions, often referred to as “Amba Boys”, have obtained Starlink terminals through black market channels and use them for terrorist communications and tactical coordination against the state.

David Holtzman, Executive Chairman and Chief Strategy Officer at Naoris Quantum Protocol, says such portable satellite devices can create a very real challenge in conflict-affected or fragile regions, because they allow people to maintain reliable communications even when local mobile networks or internet infrastructure have been disrupted, shut down or are simply unavailable. 

“When those devices are operating outside formal licensing and security frameworks, they can potentially give non-state armed groups a way to coordinate activity, share information or maintain contact with far less visibility than governments would typically have through conventional communications networks,” Holtzman says.

Holtzman, who served as a cybersecurity and internet advisor to the Clinton Administration, wondered whether governments such as Cameroon have clear rules in place, appropriate oversight of how Starlink services are being used, and a practical ability to act when a device or network is being used in a way that creates a credible national-security risk.

To him, in addition to the risk of misuse, governments need to make sure that the systems they are adopting are built with strong encryption, clear data-governance standards and post-quantum resilience from the outset. 

“If they wait until quantum-capable adversaries are able to break the cryptography protecting today’s communications, securing infrastructure that is already deeply embedded will be far more expensive, complex and disruptive,” he argues.

To Asif Alam, an RF and antenna systems engineer, the national security vulnerability posed by Starlink is the risk that deserves the most precise technical treatment, though it gets the least. 

According to Alam, the same terminal that connects a rural school connects an armed group. He notes that low-Earth orbit satellite links are encrypted end-to-end, low latency, difficult to jam without affecting legitimate users in the same beam, and nearly impossible to intercept using traditional signals intelligence methods designed for ground-based networks. 

“A non-state actor with a Starlink terminal has tactical communication capabilities that would have required state-level resources a decade ago,” Alam says. 

Sovereignty concerns, regulatory tensions

As part of its long-term development blueprint, Vision 2035, Cameroon has prioritized the growth of its ICT sector, while at the same time making the safeguarding of digital sovereignty a central strategic goal.

Kazanov believes using private firms as backbone communication platforms could lead to significant threats to digital sovereignty and national security's overall survival. 

“SpaceX is essentially a private industry with direct ties to the US military and relies heavily on contracts with the US Government; therefore, African countries are exposed to enormous risk from their dependence on a US-based company's services for African nations, especially during diplomatic disputes involving their country,” he says. He adds that SpaceX can subjectively choose to shut off their service for customers in these areas without notice. 

Experts have also expressed concerns about traffic routing through Starlink infrastructure which means data generated in African countries transit systems outside African legal jurisdiction before any national policy framework can touch it. 

“When a critical infrastructure provider is controlled by a single private individual who also has interests across multiple companies and industries, there is always the possibility that commercial, political or operational priorities may not fully align with the needs of the country relying on that service,” Holtzman says.

According to him, though not an issue unique to Starlink, it is likely to become increasingly relevant as more essential infrastructure comes under the control of a small number of extremely wealthy private owners.

Treading with caution

Cameroon has long treated the Starlink file as sensitive, citing risks to digital sovereignty, national security, and regulatory oversight. After suspending the import of Starlink kits in 2024, the government reinforced its stance by asking the company to block roaming access in the country. Despite this, demand for high-speed satellite internet has continued to grow, prompting officials to cautiously reopen talks.

On June 27, 2025, Minister of Posts and Telecommunications Minette Libom Li Likeng received a Starlink delegation in Yaounde, formally launching a normalization process. The meeting allowed Starlink to submit a complete application for authorization, aligning with Cameroon’s regulatory framework. 

This marked a turning point, as the government began preparing the groundwork for a possible concession agreement, though officials emphasized that sovereignty and security concerns remain paramount.

By late 2025, Cameroon’s Telecommunications Regulatory Board (ART) had finalized a draft concession agreement and technical specifications for Starlink Cameroun Sarl, a to-be local subsidiary. These documents were forwarded to the supervisory authority for review, initiating the next stage in the licensing process. 

While this represents significant progress, the licensing procedure has remained deliberately slow and tightly controlled.

Jeremiah Enoch, a senior associate at risk advisory firm J.S. Held, thinks the risk is not Starlink per se, but regulatory asymmetry. “A highly capable private satellite operator can move faster than many national regulatory systems.”

Enoch believes that the sovereignty concern is not simply that Starlink is foreign-owned as many African telecoms markets already depend on foreign capital and infrastructure. 

“Unless governments update licensing, data protection, customs enforcement and security cooperation mechanisms, they may find themselves regulating a critical communications service after it has already become embedded,” he says.
 

By Amindeh Blaise Atabong: He is a Freelance journalist