You want context? I'll show you context.

The data infrastructure of Africa is largely cell phones.

Most people surveyed — a median of 80 percent across all seven sub-Saharan African countries — said they use their phones to send text messages. Only about half take pictures or video with their phones, while 30 percent use them to make or receive payments, 21 percent get political news, 19 percent use them to access social networks, 17 percent use them to get health information and 14 percent use them to look for jobs.

Regardless of what they use their cells for, their carriers are terrestrial. Cell towers are erected and are subject to communications laws. They are subject to data caps. They are subject to obscenity and piracy laws. They are, in other words, the terrestrial half of the Internet.

Enter Facebook. Set aside for a moment the fact that something like 60% of your cell phone data is auto-playing Facebook videos. Set aside for a moment the fact that they have their own political agenda. Set aside for a moment the fact that they're now tracking people who aren't even using Facebook.

Facebook is already more than a third of all mobile advertising. And every indication is that Africa will never be more than mobile. Desktop internet is a dying breed out here in the land of AOL CDs... where "internet" began on flip phones and Lagos cafes it will never again be on anything larger than an iPad ever again.

Assume Facebook were a company of pure lily-white altruism. Expect half the internet usage in Africa to be, well, Facebook. Assume Facebook just wants those eyeballs to experience its autoplay ads in the quality they were intended - should Zuck throw money behind a bunch of cell towers that are subject to the whims of tribal warfare and banana republics?

Or should he launch a fleet of Uberplanes to beam the glory of the master race down upon the benighted and besodden brown underclass?

Presume Mozambique declares Facebook to be in violation of fair trade and insists on equal access to domestic internet providers (or, fuck - domestic newspapers). Facebook can go "fuck you, I'm on a plane", retreat to Mozambique and hit 80% of the country. At 60,000 feet, it's 300 miles to the horizon... and aside from central Congo, there isn't anything Facebook can't hit from an adjacent country.

Shit. just take a look at how much of Africa you can hit from international waters at that distance.