I'm going to be running a campaign that takes place in Sudan, Africa. The Darfur-region to be specific. The players are mercenary types. I'm just curious, to what extent do you think the Matrix will be present in Sudan in 2070? Would I be best to tell my players to avoid full-fledged hackers and go for a rigger with some hacking ability?

I'd say widespread wireless infrastructure would be very rare. A rigger with enough hacking ability to do combat hacking (ie, against rival merc crews, the occasional fortified enclave, etc) would be the route I'd suggest to a player in my game.

I see it the same as Tiger Eyes. Expanding further, I would say a combat hacker to defend and asault rival merc crews is going to be essential. In such a wide open environment, sensors can pick you up and a missle can be dropped on you from a combat drone (or sniped from one) from so fucking far you stand no chance. Not to mention all your standard 2070 merc gear is going to be highly electronic and networked and if a hacked comes in a fucks your jeeps or navigation system or comm systems or nutrition system, you will die a lonely death. Information Warfare is the first and deadliest front in large open spaces. You need to a competant hacker to protect yourself as well as attack the opposition.

Also, note that you'd be insane not to bring a sat uplink, so you will be connected to the wider matrix. And that sat link better stay functional as per above. Or you will die.

Given that the rules for sat uplinks are non functional, how you resolve that rules issue is going to matter on what you are going to do. Options are:

A) Sat uplinks are just signal 8, you cannot connect to satellites

B) Sat uplinks just connect to satellite comms and the signal rating is there for no reason/a typo/something

C) Sat uplinks just connect to satellite comms AND ALSO have a signal 8 'base station' feature, functioning like a wifi AP does today

D) Sat uplinks actually have a much higher signal rating.

Full spectrum of options under the various scenarions

A) There would be no matrix

B) There would be no matrix. Instead everyone with money will have cellotaped a sat comm and a skinlink to themselves and have totally unhackable comms via satellites.

C) As B, except that people will have turned their base station off.

D) Their will be a MASSIVE matrix presence from the people running around with ludicrously high signals that reach into another countries.

I would say the most essential piece of equipment your crew will need is a SatLink. That will allow access to the Matrix even in that God forsaken country. Your rigger/hacker would also benefit from investing into making sure their drone network works as both a WAN and a means of connecting to enemy networks in order to exploit them. Smaller surveillance drones will be crucial for this.