Africa’s space race emerges as new US-China contest
According to Semafor, annual spending on space programmes across Africa is approaching $1 billion, transforming the continent’s fast-growing aerospace sector into a new front in the broader technological rivalry between the United States and China. The publication reports that whichever external power supplies hardware to African agencies now could shape the terms of cooperation for the next twenty years.
Africa’s space sector has expanded steadily over the past two decades. A growing list of countries — among them Nigeria, South Africa, Egypt, Kenya, Ghana, Rwanda and Ethiopia — have developed national agencies and launched satellites for Earth observation, communications and scientific research. The African Union’s African Space Strategy, adopted in 2016, has long framed space capabilities as essential infrastructure for managing agriculture, climate monitoring, disaster response and connectivity across the continent. The proposed African Space Agency has moved closer to formalisation in recent years, with the Egyptian capital Cairo selected as its host.
Chinese state-linked companies have been among the most visible partners for African governments seeking to build satellite and ground-station capacity. Partnerships have often been bundled into the broader Belt and Road Initiative, offering financing, launch services and training. The United States, traditionally focused on commercial export controls and security partnerships, has begun to engage more directly with African space agencies, framing cooperation around responsible space behaviour, regulatory standards and competition with rival suppliers.
As Semafor reports, the underlying concern is durability: satellites and ground systems purchased today are likely to remain in service for decades, locking African operators into specific technical standards, software ecosystems and training pipelines. For Washington and Beijing, the contest is therefore less about any single launch than about establishing a long-term foothold in a market that remains modest in absolute terms but is expanding steadily year on year.
Sources
This report was written from coverage published by the following news organisations. Follow the links for the original reporting.
