Starlink in The Gambia: still waiting

I paid $9 for a Starlink reservation in January 2025. We were visiting The Gambia at the time, and I figured it was worth the bet. Thirteen months later, I got an email that told me more — and less — than I expected.

What the email said

On February 13, 2026, Starlink sent an update to reservation holders in The Gambia. The key facts: Starlink paid the required licensing fees to the Gambian government on December 2, 2024. The final regulatory signature is still pending. No reason was given for the delay. No timeline was offered.

That's it. Fees paid, paperwork submitted, waiting for a signature that hasn't come.

Meanwhile, next door

On February 4, 2026, Starlink launched in Senegal — its 26th African market. Guinea-Bissau is live too. If you look at a map, The Gambia is a thin strip of land almost entirely surrounded by Senegal. The satellites are right there, covering the region. The infrastructure is ready. The holdup is on the ground.

Some people here have found a workaround: buy a Starlink kit abroad and use regional roaming to connect through a neighboring country's license. It works, technically. It's also illegal. Not an option for me.

What I'm working with

My current setup is a Qcell "400 MAX" package: 400GB of data per month at a theoretical 4Mbps. In practice, I get about 3.5Mbps. It costs GMD 2,755 per month — roughly €32.

It works. Most of the time. I can code, push to Git, use Claude and ChatGPT, and browse the web without much friction. I wrote about this setup when I relaunched the blog.

But when the network gets congested — and it does — things fall apart. Pings climb past 60 seconds. Video calls turn into pixelated slideshows. Database dumps that should take minutes stretch into something you start and walk away from. It's the kind of connection that rewards patience and punishes anything real-time.

What Starlink would actually change

The honest answer: quite a lot. Faster downloads of database dumps and software updates. Video calls where I can actually keep the camera on. Working with large files without planning my day around them.

What it wouldn't fix: power cuts. I already wrote about that — my MacBook, a powerbank, and good habits handle that side of things.

Still waiting

When I relaunched this blog, I mentioned Starlink as one of the things I'd be writing about — whether it would actually change anything here. I didn't expect that thirteen months later, the answer would still be "we don't know yet."

I'm not angry about it. These things take time, and licensing processes are what they are. But watching Senegal go live while The Gambia sits in bureaucratic limbo — that does test your patience.

I still hope it launches this year. In the meantime, 3.5Mbps and patience continue to do the job.