Africa’s space ambitions are moving from policy to practice

Accra, Ghana – The Africa Space Expo (ASPEX), which closed in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, last week, was not designed as a showcase for rockets and astronauts. Organisers presented it instead as a marketplace for space applications in food security, climate resilience, territorial monitoring, connectivity and maritime security, bringing start-ups, project labs and investors together to move ideas from demonstration to deployment.

The event also produced several concrete agreements. The Ivory Coast signed the Artemis Accords, becoming the 75th signatory of the agreement on space exploration and development, while Angola signed a letter of intent on space cooperation with the United Arab Emirates.

But beyond the agreements, the expo highlighted a question that is becoming harder to avoid: Can Africa move from using space technology to building more of it itself?

Ghana offers a clear illustration of both the progress and the gap.

Ghana’s ambitions in space and nuclear science date back to its early years of independence. In 1961, President Kwame Nkrumah’s government initiated a nuclear reactor project in Accra. Two years later, the government established the Ghana Atomic Energy Commission through an act of Parliament with a mandate covering the peaceful applications of nuclear energy.

The reactor project was shelved after Nkrumah was overthrown in 1966, but the institution he helped establish remains the parent body of the Ghana Space Science and Technology Institute (GSSTI).

Joseph Tandoh, director of the GSSTI, traces Ghana’s more recent space programme to a partnership with South Africa.

“Ghana became a partner through South Africa,” he told Al Jazeera. “Through that project, we were able to reconstruct the old satellite antenna at Kuntunse into a radio telescope.”