This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Senegalese engineers in hairnets and white gloves are carefully assembling a nanosatellite at a French lab—another step toward fostering their own space industry back home. Preparations are already underway for building future satellites at a new headquarters for Sensat, Senegal's national space program, outside Dakar—part of a breakneck push by several African space agencies jostling for their own piece of the final frontier.
"We have mastered the manufacturing process," Gayane Faye, chief of Sensat, told in the sterile lab at the University of Montpellier in southern France. The engineers from Sensat built their first satellite—Gaindesat-1A—in collaboration with Montpellier scientists, launching it in 2024. Gainde means "lion" in the local Wolof language.
For the follow-up, Gaindesat-1B, which will collect environmental and climate data, "we've removed the coaching component," Faye said. It's part of a drive for technological independence by Senegal, mirrored in many parts of Africa. Representatives from the continent were expected to have a strong presence at a space summit held in Paris on Wednesday and Thursday.
Across Africa, national space budgets have grown to $800 million, said Temidayo Oniosun, founder of Lagos-based consultancy Space in Africa, up from less than $300 million in 2018. That is a tiny fraction of the world total, which was $132 billion in 2024, 60% of it from the United States. But it is growing: The African Union has a new continental space agency in Cairo, and the number of countries on the continent with a space program has jumped from eight to more than 20 since 2018, according to Oniosun.
Africa's entry into space is not entirely new: Egypt launched its Nilesat 101 from French Guiana in 1998, a first for the continent. Nigeria's national space agency was founded the following year, sent its first device space-bound in 2003 and currently runs two satellites in orbit—one for communications and the other run by the military's separate space agency, Oniosun said. South Africa, another historic player, is home to a ground station that has overseen communications for hundreds of launches, and a second facility being developed with U.S. space agency NASA is due to open within two years.
Italy built a satellite-launching station on the Kenyan coast in the 1960s that operated until 1988. Kenya developed its own satellite, Taifa-1, which launched aboard a SpaceX rocket in 2023. Even restive Somalia could have its own spaceport as part of a $6 billion partnership with Turkey announced last year.
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