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NextBillion’s Most Influential Articles of 2025: Announcing the Winners of Our Annual Contest
We've counted the votes in NextBillion’s “Most Influential Articles of the Year” contest, an annual tradition since 2012. The three winners are listed in this article. Congratulations to these guest writers, and to the other contestants in the contest, whose insights have clearly resonated with our readers this past year. And thank you to everyone who voted — and everyone who read and wrote for NextBillion in 2025. Best wishes for the new year!
- Categories
- Energy, Environment, Investing, Technology, Telecommunications
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Announcing NextBillion’s Most Influential Articles of 2025: Vote for Your Favorites by Jan. 4
NextBillion’s “Most Influential Articles of the Year” contest has been an annual tradition since 2012. As we do each December, we’ve highlighted 12 of our most-read articles from the past year: You can find links to them in this article, or on the homepage below. We invite you to read them and vote for the ones that influenced your thinking the most. You can vote up to once per hour between today (Dec. 19) and 11:59 pm EST on Jan. 4. We thank you for your support and engagement over these past 20 years, and we wish you a happy and prosperous 2026.
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- Energy, Environment, Finance, Investing, Technology, Telecommunications, Transportation
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Airtel Africa Partners SpaceX to Roll Out Starlink Direct-to-Cell Connectivity Across 14 Markets
Under the partnership, Airtel Africa becomes the first mobile network operator on the continent to offer Starlink Direct-to-Cell services.
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- Technology, Telecommunications
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Uber Eats Alum Lands $14 Million Seed from a16z to Fix WhatsApp Chaos for Latin America’s Doctors
Solving the WhatsApp communication challenge in Latin America is critical because, according to Merin, patients in Latin America often choose their doctors based on their willingness to communicate using this channel.
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- Health Care, Investing, Telecommunications
- Region
- Latin America
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Meta Completes 2Africa, the World’s Longest Open-Access Subsea Cable
On key routes, the network is said to offer up to 180 terabits per second (Tbps) of capacity — more than all existing subsea cables serving Africa combined.
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- Technology, Telecommunications
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Vodacom and Starlink Partner to Connect Africa
Vodacom Group and Starlink have partnered to deliver high-speed, low-latency broadband Internet to businesses across Africa.
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- Technology, Telecommunications
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Analysis: SMS Charges May Be Inhibiting the Use of AI for 1 Billion People
"Entrepreneurs I spoke with are shelving ideas due to the price of SMS, including services that would have provided local agricultural guidance, advice for pregnant women, and insights to small businesses from transaction records."
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- Telecommunications
- Region
- Global
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70% of Lagos Phones Can’t Access 5G Despite Device Readiness, NCC Report Finds
A new industry report has revealed that Nigeria’s 5G rollout remains far behind device readiness, exposing a deep gap between user potential and network availability in the country’s largest cities.
- Categories
- Telecommunications
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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