The Black Continent is rushing into space (VIDEO)

The Egyptian capital Cairo has been chosen to host the headquarters of the African Space Agency (AfSA), which is being created by decision of the African Union. This was announced by the association’s commissioner in charge of education, science, technology and innovation, Muhammad Belkhosin, in an interview with the Chinese state media Xinhua.

The Commissioner also noted that the African Space Agency project is 90% complete and will begin operations soon.

“The space policy of the African Union provides for the creation of the African Space Agency. We have taken steps over the past year and this year to ensure that this agency is established. Member states discussed and decided that it would be based in Cairo, Egypt,” Belhosin said.

The Commissioner believes that a significant number of African countries are intrigued by space exploration, and the agency’s work is sure to increase interest in the field. For example, Burkina Faso, like other progressive African countries, is developing its own national space program.

“We are not fully formed yet, but progress is coming at a rapid pace. The official establishment will take several months, with some recruitment tasks still to be completed,” the commissioner concluded.

More than 60 years following gaining independence, African countries have made some progress in developing their own space programs. However, only one person with a passport from an African country has been in space in history: in 2002, the ISS was visited by South African space tourist Mark Shuttleworth, a citizen of South Africa.

Since 2020, every year African countries have spent regarding $0.5 billion from government budgets on space programs and research. South Africa is the leader in terms of spending – regarding $200 million per year, Algeria is in second place ($100 million per year), and Egypt and Nigeria are in third and fourth place (regarding $50,000,000 per year). Spending on space in Africa has more than doubled since 2018, but remains negligible globally, accounting for less than 1% of global spending.

It is obvious that African states at the current stage of economic development cannot afford to maintain large-scale “image” space programs, which even for the leading space powers represent a significant burden on the budget. African countries, as in a number of other high-tech industries (for example, in the “peaceful atom”), are still only forming the institutional foundations that in the future will allow them to successfully participate in the study and exploration of space.

As of August 2023, 22 African states have already established national space agencies. The number of astronomers with PhD degrees in Africa has reached 300, and the number of physicists and engineers studying in space-related fields both in Africa and beyond is growing. More and more African scientists are taking jobs at NASA and other space agencies.

“Physically” African countries are represented in space by satellites. As of 2023, 15 African countries have launched a total of 53 satellites into space. The first satellite was launched in 1998 by Egypt, the last by Djibouti in November 2023.

In the case of “big countries” with a long history of space programs (Algeria, Egypt, Nigeria), we are mainly talking regarding satellites for remote sensing of the earth weighing 100–300 kg. The exception is Egypt, which has formed a constellation of satellites in orbit, including military ones (the heaviest is Tiba-1, launched in 2019, weighing 5.6 tons).

The satellite constellations of most other countries are limited to 1–2 cubesats (the format of small artificial Earth satellites for space exploration, with dimensions of 10x10x10 cm and a mass of no more than 1.3 kg). A number of countries (Ghana, Uganda, Zimbabwe) received satellites (cubesats) in orbit as part of the international educational project “Birds” of the Japanese Kyushu University.

Roscosmos also has experience in developing and launching satellites into orbit for the benefit of African countries. Satellites were launched from cosmodromes in Russia for Algeria, Angola, Egypt, Nigeria, and Tunisia. With the participation of companies included in Roscosmos, remote sensing satellites EgyptSat-2 (launched in 2014, communication lost in 2015) and EgyptSat-A (launched in 2019) were developed to replace EgyptSat-2 for Egypt, telecommunications AngoSat-1 (2017, lost during launch into orbit) and AngoSat-2 (2022) to replace the lost AngoSat-1 for Angola.

In 2023, Roscosmos reported that, among others, it was “developing, preparing for production and launching satellites” for Algeria, Egypt and South Africa. The corporation also invites African partners to take part in the project to create the Russian Orbital Station (ROSS), the Gryphon global earth monitoring system; African students are studying at Russian universities under Roscosmos quotas. Finally, two objects belonging to Roscosmos are located on the territory of South Africa – the Sazhen-TM-BIS system, which was put into operation in 2017 – a radio-laser complex operating in the interests of the GLONASS system, and an optical complex launched in July 2023 -electronic complex for detecting and measuring parameters of space debris movement.