Africa’s space ambitions, served with a side of sovereignty concerns

Inside: Russia's struggle with RoI on its African disinfo campaigns and other headlines across African infosec

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CybAfrique Media
April 25, 2026

CybAfriqué is a space for news and analysis on cyber, data, and information security on the African continent.

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Africa’s space ambitions, served with a side of sovereignty concerns

Africa has 68 satellites in orbit across 19 countries. It has invested over $4.7 billion in space infrastructure since 1998. It has national space agencies in over 20 nations, a continent-wide African Space Agency inaugurated in Cairo in April 2025, and ambitions to put 120 more satellites in orbit by 2030. It does not have a single operational launch site. 

Every satellite Africa has ever sent into orbit has launched from somewhere else: California, Kazakhstan, French Guiana, China, Japan. The continent sometimes builds the hardware, writes the mission parameters, and trains the engineers. But every time it has to ship the satellite overseas, hand it to a foreign rocket, and watch from the ground. Increasingly, that "overseas" is Beijing.

One of Africa’s earliest satellites was built by postgraduate engineering students at Stellenbosch University in South Africa, launched as a secondary payload on a Delta II rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California on February 23, 1999. They called it SUNSAT. It cost approximately $5 million; the launch was free, and contact with the craft was lost less than two years later.

A year before SUNSAT, Egypt put a satellite in orbit, NileSat 101, a direct TV broadcast satellite, in April 1998, aboard a European Ariane 4 rocket from Kourou, French Guiana. It delivered over 100 digital TV channels to more than five million homes across North Africa. Algeria followed in 2002 with Alsat-1, built by Surrey Satellite Technology. NigeriaSat-1 followed in 2003, also built by Surrey, with 15 Nigerian engineers trained at the UK company as part of a technology transfer agreement. Ethiopia launched its first satellite in 2019, with Chinese assistance. Kenya's Taifa-1 went up in April 2023, designed by Kenyans but manufactured in Bulgaria by EnduroSat AD, launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9 from American soil. Senegal's Gaindesat-1A, the continent's 12th country to achieve Earth observation capability, rode a SpaceX Falcon 9 Transporter 11 rocket in August 2024.

African governments allocated $426 million to space programs in 2025. The European Space Agency's budget that year was $8 billion. NASA's budget was roughly $25 billion. Africa's total space spending is lower than what the United States allocates to some single missions.

That funding gap shapes everything. Between 2018 and August 2024, African governments financed 77% of the continent's satellite launches. The sector is not commercially driven; it is state-driven, which means it moves at the pace of government budgets, foreign exchange rates, and political cycles. In 2024, the continental space budget fell by 27.86% year-on-year, largely because local currencies depreciated against the dollar.

China's pitch to Africa's space sector is simple and often difficult to refuse. Full package deals including satellite design, manufacturing, launch, ground station construction, and long-term technical support, all bundled and financed through concessional loans from the Export-Import Bank of China. No Western competitor has consistently matched that level of integration.

Nigeria offers one of the clearest examples of how this model works, and what it costs. In 2007, the China Great Wall Industry Corporation delivered NigComSat-1, Nigeria's first communications satellite, after winning a contract that beat out 21 other bidders. The total cost was $311 million. China's Ex-Im Bank covered $200 million of that through a preferential loan. The satellite was launched on a Long March 3B rocket from the PLA Air Force's 27th Experimental Training Base in Xichang. The deal came packaged with 15 years of technical support from CGWIC, and China committed to ongoing telemetry, tracking, and command operations from its ground station in Kashi.

NigComSat-1 failed within two years of launch. China replaced it with NigComSat-1R in 2011, which remains operational. But the structure of the original deal came with fine print that is only now becoming visible. The financing was tied to a fixed volume of crude oil exports from Nigeria to Chinese state entities. "Oil-for-infrastructure" arrangements were common under President Olusegun Obasanjo. In March 2026, China Great Wall Industry Corporation sent a letter to Nigeria demanding $11.44 million for seven years of telemetry, tracking and command services from the Kashi station, giving Nigeria 30 days to pay or face transponder deactivation, a shutdown that would disrupt broadcasting, internet, and security links across the country. Nigeria's NigComSat denied owing the full amount. The letter was nonetheless copied to President Bola Tinubu. The ground infrastructure it depends on is Chinese, so is the leverage.

Ethiopia tells a similar story. China's Academy of Space Technology built Ethiopia's first satellite, ETRSS-1, launched in December 2019. The deal came packaged with training for Ethiopian engineers and full technical support. In 2021, Chinese firms constructed a 7.3-meter satellite receiving antenna at the Entoto Observatory near Addis Ababa. In 2024, they built a larger 12-meter antenna at the same site. Ethiopian technicians now independently manage operations and sell satellite data to external clients. Officials describe it as a "ground station as a service" model. China's ongoing access to the facility is undisclosed.

Ethiopia is now planning its third satellite, ETRSS-02 — again with China. The financial terms of that deal are also undisclosed. Since 2005, Chinese companies have won approximately 20% of foreign satellite contracts across Africa. China has launched satellites for Algeria, Nigeria, Sudan, Ethiopia, and Egypt. Algeria's Alcomsat-1 communications satellite, its most capable, was developed, built, and launched entirely in China in December 2017. 

China is the most visible partner, but not the only one. The full picture of who launches Africa's satellites looks less like a bilateral dependency and more like a continent shopping wherever the price is right. SpaceX has emerged as a significant player, particularly for smaller satellites. Senegal's Gaindesat-1A went up on a Falcon 9. Kenya's Taifa-1 rode a Falcon 9. Zimbabwe's ZimSat-2 launched in November 2024. SpaceX charges between $5,000 and $6,500 per kilogram — prices that remain high for African budgets, but are lower than those of legacy providers, and without the geopolitical entanglements of the Chinese option.

Europe's involvement is older and deeper than it appears. The EU-Africa Space Partnership Programme, launched in 2025 with a €100 million budget running through 2028, is a direct attempt to deepen that relationship as China's footprint expands. Japan has been involved through educational programs, helping Ghana build GhanaSat-1 through the Kyushu Institute of Technology's CubeSat program, and partnering with Rwanda on its first satellite. The UK's Surrey Satellite Technology trained Nigerian and Algerian engineers in the early 2000s. Russia, through Ukrainian-linked launch vehicles, put NigeriaSat-2 and NigeriaSat-X into orbit in 2011 from a Russian military base.

In April 2025, the African Space Agency was formally inaugurated in Cairo's Space City. It is modelled loosely on ESA and designed to coordinate the continent's 55 AU member states, pool resources, negotiate joint contracts, and build shared infrastructure. African nations collectively plan to launch 120 more satellites by 2030. Investment in satellite manufacturing is projected to rise from $1.9 billion between 2018 and 2024, to $2.6 billion between now and 2030.

The numbers sound significant. But in context: African nations allocated just $426 million total to space in 2025, less than 1% of global spending. The EU alone is spending €100 million just on the Africa-EU partnership program. South Africa, the continent's most advanced space-industrial economy, has approximately 20 space engineering companies exporting about $1 billion in satellite components and subsystems globally, yet less than 1% of that revenue comes from African customers. 

The African Space Agency begins with a mandate to coordinate 55 countries, plan 120 satellite launches, and drive a $2.6 billion investment program, with no launch site, $426 million in annual budget across the entire continent, and a structural dependence on foreign rockets.

Russia’s struggle with disinfo RoI

News about Russian disinformation campaigns in Africa is a dime a dozen these days. A new study by Africa Confidential argues that the impact of these campaigns in the Alliance of Sahel States (A.E.S) is overstated in Russian intelligence reports. The authors argue that, instead, these campaigns have not been as fruitful for Russia as they could have been, and that Junta responses to Russian influence are more measured than often assumed. 

A recent cache of 75 secret Russian memos about the Kremlin’s propaganda in Africa shows heavy investment in disinformation, ambitious plans to influence military juntas in the Sahel, and promoting authoritarian rule in other African governments. Methods included paying 35 websites and media organisations to publish over 700 pro-Russian stories for fees between $250 and $700 per article. Africa Confidential analysts argue that the memos wildly exaggerate Moscow's actual control. The memos claim credit for major political shifts, including the creation of the AES. However, evidence suggests that these juntas (Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger) acted largely independently, driven by their own survival needs and anti-French sentiment.  

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