In early October, Eutelsat and Facebook announced a new partnership that will enable the social networking site to push its internet for all initiative in Africa through the use of satellite technology.

Plans are currently underway to connect 7 countries including Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Ghana and DR Congo by the end of 2016 and cover the entire continent by 2019.

"Satellite networks are well suited to economically connecting people in low to medium density population areas and the high throughput satellite architecture of AMOS-6 is expected to contribute to additional gains in cost efficiency," Eutelsat said.

Both Eutelsat and Facebook believe there is a need for connectivity in Africa and they have united to achieve this goal said Laurent Grimaldi, head of broadband activities in Africa at Eutelsat.

Grimaldi says the company's new satellite technology can beam high speed broadband up to 18Gbps in a large area. This will complement the ongoing connectivity directives by telecoms through 3G and 4G and also fibre connections.

"You can have an ADSL or fibre like broadband at a very low cost," Grimaldi said. "We have developed a similar system in Europe five years ago, for 30 Euros for 20 Mbs."

As a part of their Internet.org (Free Basics), Facebook is looking at how to reach expansive areas in developing world with broad technology.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg said in a post in October, "Over the last year Facebook has been exploring ways to use aircraft and satellites to beam internet access down into communities from the sky. To connect people living in remote regions, traditional connectivity infrastructure is often difficult and inefficient, so we need to invent new technologies."

Through its partnership with Eutelsat, Facebook will lease this capacity to third party operators in the mobile and internet space in African nations to provide a subsidised model of connection for businesses.

Grimaldi said that the company has already placed an order for AMOS-6 satellites that will be used to serve West, East and Southern Africa.

The markets slotted for the first phase will serve as a testing ground before the company rolls the service out in the rest of Africa.