China-Africa Satellite Cooperation Reaches Milestone as Data-Sharing Initiative Expands
The China-Africa Cooperation Centre on Satellite Remote Sensing Application (CACSA) convened its 2025 annual meeting in Deqing County, Zhejiang Province, from October 20 to 24, 2025, marking two years of operations and the 25th anniversary of broader China-Africa cooperation frameworks. The CACSA Week 2025 was jointly hosted by the Chinese Land Satellite Remote Sensing Application Centre (LASAC) and the National Satellite Ocean Application Centre.
Held under the theme “Satellite Remote Sensing Application Cooperation, Empowering a New Future for China and Africa,” the event brought together policymakers, technical experts, and representatives from African and Chinese institutions to deepen exchanges on satellite applications, capacity building, and collaborative projects. Discussions focused on advancing joint research, expanding data-sharing mechanisms, and promoting the practical use of remote sensing technologies to support sustainable development goals across Africa.
As the first CACSA Week since the 2024 Beijing Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC), the event also reflected a renewed commitment to strengthening technological partnerships and ensuring that the Summit’s outcomes translate into tangible benefits for African countries through space-based solutions.
Operational Progress
Since its establishment in July 2023, CACSA has built a network across 16 African nations and the Regional Centre for Mapping of Resources for Development (RCMRD). The initiative has deployed 14 cloud-based platform nodes across the continent, providing African government agencies with access to over 70,000 high-resolution satellite images at no cost.
Furthermore, the centre has produced remote sensing products for urban planning, land-use monitoring, and watershed management. Training programmes have reached approximately 400 participants from various African countries, supplemented by graduate-level academic partnerships.
During the meeting, China’s Land Satellite Remote Sensing Application Centre signed cooperation agreements with agencies in Burundi, Comoros, and Gabon, extending the network’s geographic reach.
Strategic Context
China’s satellite cooperation with Africa addresses a practical gap. Many African nations lack the infrastructure and technical capacity to independently acquire, process, and apply Earth observation data, capabilities increasingly essential for resource management, agricultural planning, and climate adaptation.
The initiative aligns with China’s broader engagement strategy on the continent, which emphasises infrastructure development and technology transfer alongside traditional trade and investment. Satellite remote sensing is a relatively low-cost, high-impact field where China has significant technical advantages. In addition, the focus on capacity building, through training programmes and graduate education, recognises that hardware and data alone provide limited value without local expertise to apply them.
For African participants, the partnership offers tangible benefits. For instance, Ghana’s Space Science and Technology Institute director, Dr Joseph Bremang Tandoh, noted the technology’s applications for resource monitoring and food security. These priorities resonate across a continent where agriculture remains central to most economies and where climate variability poses growing challenges.
Similarly, Rwanda’s commercial counsellor, Samuel Abikunda, characterised the cooperation as part of a “shared vision to harness science, technology and innovation for sustainable development,” language that reflects how participating nations view the partnership as complementary to their development objectives rather than merely as technical assistance.
Looking Forward
Wu Jun, deputy director of international cooperation at China’s Ministry of Natural Resources, described CACSA as following the principles of data sharing, technology empowerment, and talent cultivation. The framework provides a template that could expand to additional countries or technical domains.
As the partnership enters its third year, its value will be measured not by the volume of data shared or the number of trainees, but by whether African institutions can effectively apply these tools to address pressing development challenges, and whether they retain agency in deciding how satellite technology shapes their countries’ futures.