Why Ethiopia is building a space programme

And why critics think it an odd use of scarce resources

THE ancient holy town of Lalibela, perched some 2,500

metres above sea-level in Ethiopia’s northern highlands,

boasts some of the clearest night skies imaginable. Ethiopian

stargazers dream that the mountains around Lalibela may

one day host a world-class observatory to rival the big ones

in Chile and Hawaii. And in time Ethiopia hopes to do more

than just gaze at the stars. It would like to launch its own

satellites, too.

In January the government said it would launch a

Chinese-built civilian satellite from an overseas rocket

pad within the next five years. It would be designed to

Ethiopian specifications and used to monitor crops and

the weather, and doubtless to spy on neighbours, too. The

government also wants to reduce reliance on foreign

telecoms by launching its own communications satellite.

In putting its own satellites into orbit Ethiopia would join

the select club of African nations that have already done so.

Nigeria has paid for the launch of five since 2003, some of

which it says have helped fight terrorism. South Africa has

also put several home-built satellites into space. Egypt

launched two earth- observation ones, both of which have

since failed; a private  company, Nilesat, successfully

operates communications ones.

Kenya, Angola and Ghana are eager to join them.

Being able to beam communications or take photos from

space offers some economic benefits. Ethiopia’s government

hopes that mapping the country to help resolve land disputes,

for instance, could boost agricultural productivity. And it

could help with planning cities better. Investment in space

science might also help speed up industrialisation, the

government hopes.

But do countries like Ethiopia need to own, build, or launch

their own satellites to reap these benefits? Constellations

of satellites constantly float above Africa today, providing

the signals used for global positioning services and,

for a fee, pictures that can be used to assess droughts

and other natural disasters. Gabon aims to manage its

vast forests  with the help of a satellite receiving station,

not by building a satellite. High-resolution, tailored

imagery is still costly, but the sort that can be used for most

development purposes, such as monitoring crop yields, is now

cheap or even free. And many functions of satellites, such

as resource mapping, are increasingly being replaced by drones.

The case for communication satellites, which are much more

expensive, is weaker still. Keith Gottschalk of the University

of the Western Cape notes that a single communications

satellite can broadcast to the entire continent. Nigeria,

meanwhile, spent $300m on a Chinese communication

satellite which failed in little over a year. Its successor

struggles to compete with commercial providers: its annual

revenue in 2015 was a measly $3.3m.

Africa is entering the space race at a time when the cost of

satellite technology is falling fast. Tiny “cubesats” can be

made by private firms for just a few hundred thousand

dollars each and launched just as cheaply. For Ethiopia,

where few scientists have the expertise to make use of the

flood of cheap data, perhaps the best argument for a

modest space programme is that it might help the country

develop its human capital. But at a time when 5.6m

Ethiopians need emergency food aid because of a drought,

it seems an odd priority.

Correction (April 4th): A previous version of this

story mistakenly referred to Planet, an aerospace firm,

 as a supplier of cubesats. This has been removed.

We regret the error.

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Source        –    The Economist