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The government has announced plans to financially equip Kenya Space Agency (KSA) as it seeks to make the country one of the world’s most attractive and innovative space economies.

Defence Cabinet Secretary Aden Duale called for partnerships and increased investments into the country’s space industry, noting that space plays a vital role in people’s lives, with satellites monitoring climate, providing communications, offering national security, and underpinning financial transactions. “And therefore, investment into the sector was critical at this time,” he said during the launch of the second Kenya Space Expo and Conference 2024 in Nairobi.

Peaceful uses

Today Kenya enjoys a long-standing strategic relationship with the Italian on collaboration on peaceful uses of outer space through the Luigi Broglio Space Center (BSC) located near Malindi, which is an Italian Space Agency (ASI) Spaceport.

Italian Ambassador to Kenya Roberto Natali said at the Malindi facility plans are underway to establish a Centre for Earth Observation with assistance from the Italian Space Agency.

“My government has provided 15 fully paid PhD scholarships on Earth Observation to Kenyan nationals, and the nominees for the PhD programme will begin their studies in September this year,” he added.

The Centre is expected to provide Kenya with access to numerous earth observation and remote sensing datasets and processing capabilities for decision support and planning.

In addition, the Italian Space Agency will establish an International Training Centre for Space Education and a Centre for Cubesat Development intended for training and apprenticeship of our budding engineers on space systems engineering, and other specializations.

The sector is seeing the emergence of new government space programmes with the governments of Egypt and Rwanda establishing fully operational space agencies during the second half of 2019 and first half of 2020.

With other countries announcing their national space programme, this translates to an increase in national budgetary allocation for space.

For 2020, African governments budgeted an estimated $490 million (Sh63.4 billion) towards their space programme compared to $250 million (S32.4 billion) from the previous year, excluding capital expenditures on the acquisition of satellites.