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Last week, Uganda hosted the inaugural African Development Satellite Project AfDev-Sat workshop, marking a significant milestone in Africa’s collaborative efforts to advance space technology. The event highlighted the substantial progress made by participating nations in this pioneering initiative, the first satellite to be jointly developed by African countries. Furthermore, the workshop highlighted the strength of […]

Airtel Africa has announced a partnership agreement with SpaceX to bring Starlink’s high speed satellite internet services to customers across its operational footprint in Africa. This partnership marks a significant step in expanding digital access on the continent, particularly in underserved and hard-to-reach regions. To operationalise this milestone, SpaceX has secured the necessary operating licences

Dragonfly Aerospace has announced a strategic Compatibility Agreement with Unibap Space Solutions, a Swedish leader in radiation tolerant edge computing. The agreement enables seamless integration between Dragonfly’s advanced electro-optical imaging payloads, Gecko, Mantis, Caiman, and the Chameleon series (SWIR and Hyperspectral), and Unibap’s high performance edge computing platforms, including the iX5 and iX10 flight computers.

On 23 May 2025, Communications and Digital Technologies Minister Solly Malatsi unveiled a draft policy direction in the Government Gazette proposing an alternative to the stringent Broad Based Black Economic Empowerment B-BBEE ownership requirements for the ICT sector. The new model would allow companies to meet empowerment obligations through equity equivalent programmes (EEPs) rather than

On May 29, 1919, a total solar eclipse helped to prove Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity. Einstein’s theory suggested that gravity could bend light by curving the fabric of spacetime. To prove it, he thought it would be a great idea to look at background stars that appear very close to the sun. This

Yet behind every map driving these critical choices lies a question: How do we transform raw spatial data into actionable intelligence? At the 2025 NewSpace Africa Conference, we spoke with Sohail Elabd, Director of International Strategies at Esri, about the company’s role in answering this challenge. With decades of global GIS leadership and deep regional

South Africa has announced a new partnership with the United Arab Emirates UAE to establish a dedicated South African satellite, further enhancing the country’s space technology capabilities. Speaking on the sidelines of the SAMENA Leaders’ Summit 2025 in Dubai, Deputy Minister of Communications and Digital Transformation, Mondli Gungubele, confirmed the partnership, which builds on the

On May 28, 1959, two monkeys named Able and Baker became the first monkeys to go to space and make it back alive. Miss Able was a rhesus monkey from Kansas, and her crewmate Miss Baker was a squirrel monkey from Peru. They were tucked inside tight capsules, covered in various sensors and electrodes and

GeoVille, the lead implementing organisation of the European Space Agency’s flagship DUNIA programme, has unveiled a major enhancement to the platform aimed at transforming access to and utilisation of Earth Observation EO data across Africa. The latest upgrade introduces continent wide Sentinel 2 streaming and browser based index calculation tools, reflecting Dunia’s vision of promoting

In a groundbreaking international collaboration, astronomers from China’s Tsinghua University, along with scientists from Italy, Australia, Germany, and other nations, have used two of the world’s most advanced radio telescopes, China’s Five hundred meter Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope FAST and South Africa’s MeerKAT array, to conduct unprecedented observations of globular clusters, some of the Milky