Rwanda set to launch Africa’s latest space satellite in 2019
Rwanda has just announced plans to launch its own in 2019.
The East African nation is working together with Japan
International Cooperation Agency (JICA) and the Japan Aerospace
Exploration Agency (JAXA) in this project, according to the Rwanda
Utility and Regulatory Authority (RURA).
“We are trying to shorten the timeline. It will be launched after the Transform Africa summit,” said Patrick Nyirishema, RURA’s Director General.
Transform Africa, an annual ICT summit, is scheduled for May this
year in Kigali, making it the first satellite to be launched in 2019
ahead of Ethiopia’s launch in September.
Similar plans were announced back in 2017, with a model satellite presented to the public for the first time in 2018 in Kigali.
According to New Times,
five Rwandan engineers are working with their Japanese counterparts at
the University of Tokyo on the design and construction of the
satellite. Fifteen other engineers are also set to be trained locally
in satellite technology.
The satellite is expected to provide the government with data to help
it plan well in various sectors including agriculture and predicting
weather patterns,
“Satellite technology will not only build capabilities for our
people, it will also give us capacity, for instance, to inspect certain
activities within the agriculture sector, monitor wetlands as part of
environment conservation efforts, and in smart urban planning,”
Nyirishema pointed out.
Rwanda now joins African countries such as Ethiopia, Zimbabwe Kenya, South Africa, Ghana, Nigeria, Angola, Algeria, Morocco and Egypt, which have satellites orbiting the earth.
All these individual country satellite projects are in line with the African Union (AU) African Space Policy,
launched in 2017. It acknowledges the benefits of space exploration and
recommends the use of satellites for development and economic progress.
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