The Gambia’s Internet Revolution: How Fiber, 5G, and Satellite Broadband Are Connecting a Nation
A 2022 outage of the ACE submarine cable left The Gambia offline for over eight hours, exposing risks from reliance on a single link. QCell launched 5G in June 2023, followed by Africell in early 2024, but coverage remains limited to urban Greater Banjul. Internet penetration dropped from 54.2% in early 2024 to about 45–46% by early 2025. As of May 2025, Starlink remained unlicensed in the country.