Developing satellites in Africa

South Africa is the only country on the continent to design, build and operate a satellite.

“Other African countries that have satellites have procured them from abroad and in certain instances they are not even operating the satellite,” he added.

Since South Africa has skilled engineers who have the capacity to build a satellite, the country is looking at codevelopment with other African countries while also working with those outside the continent.

SANSA regards Africa as its target market.

“If we are working outside of South Africa we can obviously sell a lot of our products and services. In fact, that's what a lot of other international agencies are doing and are trying to sell their product and services to Africa as well.”

“We are a leading agency on the continent – there's a huge market waiting for us. Until recently we have primarily been focusing on South Africa but now we are broadening our scope to Africa where there are a lot of opportunities,” said Dr Munsami.

He is also working towards strengthening the voice of developing nations in the international space advocacy space.

Dr Munsami is the first South African to be elected as one of the four vice-presidents of International Astronautical Federation. (IAF).

This international space advocacy organisation is based in Paris, France and aims to establish a dialogue between scientists around the world and lay the foundation for international space cooperation. It is the mother body to about 3000 space agencies from across the globe.

Dr Munsami believes that there is insufficient representation of developing countries on this platform and aims to bring more developing countries into the IAF.

“The IAF is broader platform that will help African countries explore and exploit the space industry even better,” he explained.