The African Space Agency and the Dragon in the Room

Inaugurated on April 20, it is headquartered in Cairo. The continent places great hopes in it, supported by Europe and individual states, primarily Italy and France. But leading the way is China.

BY EMILIO COZZI

Africa Has Its Own Space Agency

It brings together the 55 member states of the African Union to coordinate and fulfill their extraterrestrial ambitions. For the continent, however, the road to the stars will be long and (not only physically) uphill.
The ceremony for the African Space Agency, AfSA, was held in Cairo on April 20, 2025. In addition to heads of state and space agencies from across Africa (about twenty in total), representatives attended from the European Space Agency (Marco Ferrazzani), the Italian Space Agency (Director General Luca Maria Salamone), the French and Japanese agencies, and Karen Feldstein from Nasa. The Russian ambassador to Cairo brought greetings from Moscow. The UN was represented by a delegate from the Office for Outer Space Affairs, Unoosa.
China, notably, appeared to be absent, an odd omission. Or perhaps not.

The video released by AfSA doesn’t resolve all doubts. One thing is clear: the official press release mentions all the above participants, except the Russian ambassador. However, the Russian embassy in Cairo later released the speech its ambassador delivered at the inauguration.
Beijing’s official news agency, Xinhua, did report on the event, citing, curiously, not an institutional representative but Huan Yiheng, cofounder of MinoSpace, a Beijing based company that designs small satellites: “We want to explore opportunities for cooperation with AfSA and other African countries,” he said.

On the website of the Chinese embassy in Egypt, there is no mention of the event. However, prominently displayed on the homepage, just beneath the tribute to the president (“Xi’s Time”), is a link to the “2024 China Africa Cooperation Forum Summit.”
And there it is, the Dragon in the room, hiding in plain sight.

Europe for Africa. U.S. in Retreat

According to Space in Africa, the space sector generates around 22 billion dollars, a landscape in which hundreds of companies are emerging and whose projected value is rapidly increasing. However, in 2024, governments allocated just over 465 million dollars to the sector overall a 27 percent decrease year over year. According to Un projections, Africa is the continent with the highest population growth rate: by the end of the century, its population is expected to approach that of Asia. It is also the poorest continent and, more than any other, it urgently needs satellite infrastructure and services to connect people, manage land, and tackle climate change. Economic and environmental conditions (scarce investment, poor industrialization, deserts) make the construction of costly ground infrastructure difficult.

Alongside Asia, Africa has one of the markets with the greatest growth potential. Yet, while its population accounts for 20 percent of the global total, its GDP is only 2.5 percent of the world’s. It is no coincidence that the word most often used in discussions about the African Space Agency is “opportunity.”

This is the opportunity that European countries and the EU are trying to nurture for the benefit of both shores. In this sense, it’s worth noting the Africa-EU Space Partnership Programme, launched in January 2025 with a budget of 100 million euros. The programme focuses on Earth observation, digitalization, and private sector development and will largely be implemented by the European Space Agency. Esa highlights its long-standing collaboration with the African Union in satellite monitoring and air traffic control.

France, due in part to its colonial past, has deep ties with several African countries and is engaged in various space programs: Kenya, Angola, and Morocco are among the most recent collaborations announced by Airbus and Thales Alenia Space. Panafsat and the French company signed a memorandum of understanding for the development of a Moroccan satellite communications system that will provide ultra-high-speed internet to 26 African countries to help close the digital divide. The UK is also working to build virtual bridges and maintains close ties with South Africa.

Italy has recently launched the Mattei Plan, which also includes investments and partnerships in the space sector, starting with the future use of the Malindi platform, the Luigi Broglio Space Center, used in the 1960s and 70s to launch the San Marco satellites. Noteworthy is the Memorandum of Understanding signed with Egypt a year ago. “As part of the Mattei Plan,” explained Salamone at the AfSA inauguration, “the Italian Space Agency is working with 22 African countries to develop a series of joint initiatives in training and capacity building, with the goal of promoting local expertise and strengthening national capabilities in the space sector.”

Meanwhile, the United States appears to be withdrawing from the African continent under the America First policy. It began with the dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), a decision that drew widespread criticism. But among the drafts of executive orders, as reported by the New York Times a few days ago, was the restructuring of the State Department, which includes eliminating almost all of its operations in Africa and closing embassies and consulates across the continent. At the same time, according to several African media outlets, Starlink has reportedly become the second-largest internet provider in Nigeria, a country of 230 million people and the most populous nation on the continent.

Room for China

As reported by Reuters, which published a detailed and well-documented dossier on China’s activities in Africa, the United States Institute of Peace think tank states that Beijing has established 23 bilateral space partnerships across the continent, financing satellites and ground stations for collecting space imagery and data. Egypt, South Africa, and Senegal have signed on to a program to build a lunar surface base with China and Russia. This is the “rival” program to the American and Western Artemis initiative.

Chinese space infrastructure is already present in Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia, Nigeria, and Namibia. What appears to concern the Pentagon most is that by assisting or supplying satellites to African states, Beijing also gains access to the images and data (this is Reuters’ scoop) collected by the orbiting systems, while Chinese personnel maintain a long-term presence at the facilities they help build in Africa. The news agency’s reporters described how, despite being labeled as “Egyptian” satellites, components often come from China or are even fully assembled there before being launched from Chinese sites.

It was Beijing that built the satellite lab in Cairo, and Chinese engineers are tasked with training their Egyptian counterparts. This is happening in several countries across the continent in a strategy that closely resembles a form of “neo-colonialism,” given the massive investments being made by China 50 billion dollars over the next three years.

It must be emphasized that, despite enormous internal differences, Africa’s space sector inevitably depends on the expertise developed abroad on those who have built space stations or constellations and possess the complete hardware and software chain, from launch to operations to data exploitation.

Since 1998, 18 African countries have launched just over 60 satellites. None of these were launched from African soil, because Africa is still in the process of building its own launch bases.