Five African Projects Benefit as UK Space for Sustainable Development Projects Receive £3.4 Million funding
The UK Space Agency has announced £3.4 million of new funding for 10 leading-edge projects that back UK academics using space to tackle global development problems – from the spread of malaria to human trafficking and forced labour. 5 out of these projects have been selected to be hosted in African countries.
These projects will develop solutions to global challenges that will open up new…
Why Africa is Unable to Accommodate SpaceX, Fiber Optics and other Space Projects
In 2001, Elon Musk conceptualized the Mars Oasis, an experimental greenhouse project to grow plants on Mars. Musk tried to buy cheap rockets from Russia for the success of this project, only to realise that buying rockets wasn’t so cheap after all. Frustrated, he returned to America to look for other ways for the project to work out. In 2002, he sourced for a warehouse big enough to house his…
20 African Projects Selected for IAU COVID-19 Astronomy Grants
In May 2020, the IAU Office of Astronomy for Development issued an Extraordinary Call for Proposals that could use astronomy in any form to help mitigate some of the impacts caused by COVID-19. Together with the African Astronomical Society and African Planetarium Association, more than 800,000 ZAR (about 40,000 Euros) in grants have been awarded to 43 projects around the world that use various…
Prof Melvin Hoare is Driving Development in Africa with Radio Astronomy
In 2014, a human capital development project was initiated through a joint UK-South Africa Newton Fund to help drive economic development in Africa. Development in Africa with Radio Astronomy (DARA) project aims to develop high tech skills using radio astronomy in some African countries and also provide a pool of talented young people who have been inspired by astronomy to play a leading role in…
Eutelsat Reports €98.2 million In Revenue From Africa In FY 2019-20 Results
Eutelsat Communications, a global satellite operator based in Paris, has reported it generated 98.2 million euros in revenue from sales of its satellite services in Africa for the fiscal year ended 30 June 2020.
In its 2020-19 annual financial report released on Friday, the Euronext Paris publicly-traded company said its total revenue for the fiscal year under review stood at 1.278 billion…
Jean-Claude Tshipama, CEO of Konnect Africa, On Connecting Africa Via Satellite Broadband
Despite the surge in mobile internet adoption in the past few years, about 800 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa remain unconnected.
Broadband Commission, an initiative established by UNESCO and the ITU, estimates that about USD 100 billion worth of capital investments would be needed to achieve universal broadband connectivity in Africa by 2030. The Commission found out that almost 250,000…
GMES and Africa’s CSSTE Creates Data Bank for Flood Events in West Africa
CSSTE, one of the twelve consortia under the GMES and Africa program is creating a data repository that will include historical and real-time data for individual, company and government use across West Africa.
The CSSTE program is called Multi-scale Flood Monitoring and Assessment Services for West Africa (MiFMASS) and has seven partners from five West African countries working on it. The…
Africa Needs The Space Industry To Go Forward
The African continent is bound to become increasingly more dependent on the space industry for job creation, poverty alleviation and sustainable resource management. These were some of the findings in a paper recently published by an expert in the field of Earth Observation and Geo-Information Sciences.
The paper titled “The status of Earth Observation (EO) & Geo-Information Sciences in…
List of Space Agencies in Africa
Several space research organisations are engaged in activities related to outer space and space exploration in Africa, and according to the Business and Market Analysis of the African Space Industry done by Space in Africa, over USD 4.7 billion have been spent on space projects in Africa since the launch of NILESAT 101 by Egypt in 1998. We have created a list of African countries with Space…
A4F2020: Agrorite To Deploy Satellite-based Farm Management Tool For Nigerian Farmers
Farming is vital for the majority of African economies and accounts for at least 15% of the region's GDP. Also, around two-thirds of the African population is employed within this sector, the vast majority working on small-scale farms that currently produce approximately 90% of all output.
Lack of access to prerequisite capital that boosts productivity and unstable market demand for farm produce…