Kenya is heading into space and will launch its first operational satellite in the United States on April 10 in collaboration with Elon Musk’s American company SpaceX. For the Kenyan Ministry of Defense and the Kenyan Space Agency, this satellite “will provide accurate and regular satellite data” which will be useful in particular in the “areas of agriculture and food security, natural resource management and disasters and environmental monitoring”. The satellite, Taifa-1, which means “one nation” in Swahili, “was designed and developed by a team of Kenyan researchers” at a time when East Africa’s economic powerhouse is hit by drought history after several failed rainy seasons.
This launch, from the U.S. base in Vandenberg, California, aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, is “an important milestone for Kenya’s space program and is expected to contribute significantly to spurring the growth of satellite development, analysis and processing of data and application development capabilities of Kenya’s nascent space economy,” said the Ministry of Defense and the Kenya Space Agency. You should know that, despite the acceleration of projects, today, no African country has the capacity to put its satellites into orbit, the majority of which are moreover designed abroad.
However, African governments do not intend to be left behind in the race to conquer space. Indeed, the stakes are immense for the economic development of African States, because they impact many areas, such as the environment or the securing of territories. Thus, the objective is to “develop Kenya’s technical capacity across the entire value chain of space technology development and applications” and place Kenya on the global space science map. “Space is the next frontier in many ways and we are happy to be part of it. This is our proud moment,” said KSA Acting Director Brig Hillary Kipkosgei.
The Taifa-1 closely follows Kenya’s 2018 space foray when a non-operational experimental nanosatellite was launched from the International Space Station. What is different is that the 2018 launch was experimental and was intended to map the surroundings of Kenya. In any case, Taifa-1 Sat intends to become the first stepping stone towards the development of what should be a constellation of small Earth observation satellites for Kenya.
Kenya is closely following the launch of PearlAfricaSat1 in Uganda in November 2022. So far, at least 15 African countries including Egypt, South Africa, Algeria, Nigeria and Ghana have launched satellites in space. There are also 125 new satellites being developed by 2025 by 23 African countries. The African space market is expected to be worth more than $10 billion by 2024. And, as Egypt was the first country on the continent to send a satellite into space, in 1998 the African Union (AU) recently installed the African Space Agency (AFSA) in the land of the Pharaohs with the aim of better supervising and encouraging collaboration between African States in this African conquest of space.
