The national facts on one table
Frequency plans are as listed by The Things Network's country table (marked "listed") or as established in practice by the LoRaWAN community where the regulator has not been listed (marked "in practice — confirm"). Coverage statements are our field experience per country page. Cellular IoT and sunset columns are for comparison and planning; they are not part of the stack we deploy.
| Country | Where 4G is dependable — and where it ends | LoRaWAN plan | Type approval | Cellular IoT / sunset notes (comparison only) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kenya | Nairobi–Thika and Nairobi–Mombasa corridors; thin at farms, quarries, boreholes | EU868 in practice — confirm | Communications Authority of Kenya (CA) | Safaricom has deployed NB-IoT for utility metering programmes; no published 2G sunset date |
| Zambia | Lusaka and the Copperbelt towns; off the line of rail it fades | EU863-870 (listed) | ZICTA | ZESCO eight-hour load-shedding schedules — towers and sites both need buffering |
| Tanzania | Dar es Salaam, Arusha, Mwanza, Dodoma; weak at mines, wellfields, farms | EU863-870 (listed) | TCRA | Grid-works rolling cuts affect tower uptime regionally |
| Ghana | Accra, Tema, Kumasi, Takoradi; patchier rurally | EU868 in practice — confirm | NCA | Legacy-network retirement expected around 2030 (operator statements) |
| Nigeria | Lagos, Ogun and the industrial clusters; dual-SIM failover recommended | EU868 in practice — confirm | NCC | MTN planned a 2G switch-off for December 2025 — 2G-only trackers are stranded assets |
| Botswana | Gaborone, Francistown and the main roads; hours of nothing between | EU863-870 (listed) | BOCRA | Satellite backhaul for the truly remote |
| Zimbabwe | Harare, Bulawayo and the main corridors | EU863-870 (listed) | POTRAZ | Months without national load shedding in 2026 — the site, not the tower, is the constraint |
| Uganda | Kampala, Jinja, the Namanve park; weaker up-country | Regional allocation differs from EU868 in some listings — confirm with UCC before ordering gateways | UCC | Restoration times ~20 h after the UEDCL handover — buffer accordingly |
| South Africa | Universal; 5G growing | EU863-870 (listed) | ICASA | 2G/3G-only activations barred since end-2024; shutdown operator-timed (gazette target end-2027); NB-IoT one carrier |
| Angola | Luanda, Lobito corridor; interruptions are faults and maintenance, not rationing | EU863-870 (listed) | INACOM | — |
| Mozambique | Maputo, Beira, Nacala corridors | EU863-870 (listed) | INCM | Cyclone resilience: solar + local memory as a specification |
| DR Congo | Kinshasa, Lubumbashi, the Katanga mines | EU863-870 (listed) | ARPTC | Gensets and solar as the default power |
| Malawi | Blantyre, Lilongwe | EU863-870 (listed) | MACRA | National blackout August 2026 — buffering is the design |
| Côte d'Ivoire | Abidjan, Yamoussoukro, San Pedro; comparatively reliable grid | EU868 in practice — confirm | ARTCI | — |
| Sénégal | Dakar, Diamniadio, Thiès | EU868 in practice — confirm | ARTP | — |
| Cameroun | Douala, Yaoundé | EU868 in practice — confirm | ART | Load shedding has normalised self-generation |
| Ethiopia | Addis Ababa and the industrial parks | Not listed — confirm with ECA | ECA | Import documentation is the slow step, not the network |
| Rwanda | Kigali and the SEZ; relatively reliable power | Not listed — confirm with RURA | RURA | — |
| Egypt | Cairo, the new cities and the industrial zones | EU868 in practice — confirm | NTRA | Metering hardware market saturated; value sits in the telemetry layer |
What the frequency plan decides
A LoRaWAN gateway and its sensors are built for one regional plan. Most of the continent sits on the European 863–870 MHz plan (EU868) — either listed by the regulator or adopted in practice — which is why hardware pre-configured in Johannesburg travels well. The exceptions matter exactly once: at ordering time. Where a listing differs or is absent — Uganda, Ethiopia, Rwanda and several West African markets — the plan is confirmed with the regulator before the gateway is specified, because a gateway on the wrong plan is a paperweight with an antenna. The Southern African regulators coordinate allocations through CRASA, which is why the SADC column above is uniform.
What type approval decides
Every radio module operating in a country needs that country's regulator to have approved it — the list above from ICASA to RURA. In practice this shapes the bill of materials more than the network choice does: modules with existing approvals in the target country ship; modules without them wait for a certification cycle. It is the reason our hardware list per country is short and repeatable, and the reason a "cheaper" module found online is rarely cheaper by the time it is legal to switch on.
What the sunsets decide
Africa's 2G and 3G networks are retiring gradually and selectively rather than on one date, but the direction is set: South Africa has barred new 2G/3G-only activations, Nigeria's largest operator planned its 2G switch-off, Ghana's operators talk about the end of the decade. The buying rule is the same everywhere — nothing new goes on 2G. A fleet of cheap GSM trackers bought this year is an asset with a shutdown date somebody else controls; Cat-1 and Cat-1bis modules attach to every LTE network in the table and need no special carrier support. Our LTE category guide unpacks which "4G" a device should be.
Which site gets which network
| Site | Sensor link | Backhaul | Power and buffering |
|---|---|---|---|
| Factory in the industrial belt (Tema, Thika, Lusaka, Ogun) | Wired or private LoRaWAN to an edge gateway | Cat-4 4G, dual-SIM where carriers compete | Mains + genset logged; gateway on UPS, buffers through outages |
| Utility network (DMAs, reservoirs) | Private LoRaWAN from reservoir-sited gateways | 4G per gateway | Solar nodes; store-and-forward |
| Borehole or pump station off the corridor | LoRaWAN to the nearest gateway; Cat-1 node if solitary | 4G where present; otherwise the LoRaWAN hop | Solar; months between visits |
| Mine property (Copperbelt, Guinea corridors, gold belt) | Private LoRaWAN across the property; site LTE where it exists | Fibre or 4G to the mine network | Buffering sized for eight-hour outages; IS-certified hardware where required |
| Cold-chain vehicle, reefer | Cat-1 logger on board | 4G, store-and-forward between signal | Vehicle power; logger battery |
| Village scheme, standpipe, kiosk | LoRaWAN if a scheme gateway exists; else a Cat-1 node | 4G where present; satellite for the truly remote (Botswana) | Solar; heartbeat as the first signal |
| Scattered national estate (bank branches, fuel stations, telecom shelters) | Cat-1 node per site | 4G with carrier failover | Site genset is the monitored asset |
Three rules that hold in every country
- Own the coverage where the sensors are; rent it where the gateway is. LoRaWAN across the site, 4G out of it. The per-site question is only which hop the sensor takes.
- Order the gateway to the plan, the module to the regulator. Frequency plan and type approval are national facts that decide the bill of materials before any coverage map does.
- The record has to survive the grid — and the tower's grid. Load shedding takes towers down as well as sites; local buffering at every node is what keeps a compliance or production record continuous.
How we deliver: hardware pre-configured in Johannesburg to the country's plan and approvals, installation by your technicians or a local partner under live remote guidance, LoRaWAN plus 4G per site, local buffering everywhere. Country detail on the industrial-IoT pages: Kenya · Zambia · Tanzania · Ghana · Nigeria · Botswana · Zimbabwe · Uganda.