It seems like college students can design, build, & launch a microsat for $50k-$1M. Why jump straight to $200M+ for those learnings? It shouldn't take $Billions to start getting your feet wet.
I think there's a different scale involved when you're running an experiment on a CubeSat vs. trying to set up telecommunications. ARSAT-1 and -2 were both the size of a car (3 tonnes).
Ghana launched a satellite in 2017, for 500,000 dollars.
It was used for environmental monitoring. Since the Ethiopian satellite is to be used for the same thing, it will likely cost the same amount.