China in the African Space Sector
The 2023 Memorandum of Understanding, valued at $1 billion and signed between Chinese space conglomerates and the Djibouti government, plans the construction of a spaceport complex, including seven launch pads and three testing facilities. The initiative spotlights Africa's evolving role, transitioning from an observer to an active participant in the global private space economy.
This essay contemplates China's path from its dependency on Russian post-Soviet space technology to develop its own sector to partnering with developed and developing economic powers to counter United States hegemony in the private space sector. Further, it will discuss mechanisms driving Sino-international collaboration in space and the factors motivating Chinese collaboration with Africa in the first part of the essay.
In the second part, regional African power centres are spotlighted, and their projects showcased. The emergence of an African private space sector and the accompanying idyllic calls for sustainable space development are also addressed. Subsequently, is an assessment of Chinese contributions to the African space sector.
The final section looks ahead to the African Union's vision regarding the consolidation of the African space sector and the importance of transferring knowledge to develop local know-how; China thus is able to establish a strategic footprint on the young continent. Converging interests between African capitals and Beijing provide further scope for collaboration.
Section 1: From post-Soviet technology adopter to African space sector investor
Early rocket development on the mainland commenced in the 1950s with significant support from the Soviet Union. The first satellite, Dong Fang Hong 1, was largely designed and conceived by the Soviets too, however it highlighted increased domestic capabilities for satellite development and especially launching capabilities. The Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center (JSLC) started most of its significant operations on Chinese soil after the first satellite launches. From here, the local launch capabilities developed.
By 2003, the state agency propelled the first taikonaut spaceflight onboard the Shenzhou 5 spacecraft, 42 years after the Americans and with similar technological propulsion capabilities as the Americans when they first sent their astronauts to space. In the same decade, satellite destruction capabilities were shown off to the world, aimed to highlight China's rapid accession to comparable space capabilities as the United States at a fourth of the state agency budget. The 2010s mark a turning point with the launch and gradual roll-out, through the 2020s, of the Tiangong-1 and other space station programmes. These were less dependent on Soviet and more on American space technology.
Arriving in time for the planned demise of the International Space Station (ISS), this development serves as an observable tipping point for Chinese international space co-operation. Since then, we observe how China sees its role in as a major player in the space sector and can assess its approach to international cooperation in this domain.
BRICS economic cooperation councils have served as useful forums to share satellite imagery with loosely allied countries, indicating Chinese commitment to knowledge-sharing and mutually beneficial developments in the space sector. The space station, like the ISS before it, is open to many countries to conduct experiments on and the selection procedures are carried out in collaboration with the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA). The stations are in their infancy, but alliance forming has begun.
The 2020s have so far been marked by Chinese ascent into a domain the Europeans are yet to successfully compete in: reusable rockets. The Americans are ahead thanks to their private industry champions, notably SpaceX. Europe has been constructing its Ariane 6 rocket, to compete with Falcon 9, but it has not launched as of the writing of this piece and has had a rocky development process. Similarly, the Chinese Long March 8 has stated aims to be partially re-usable by 2025. It is indicative of the progress Chinese space industry has made that it now competes with the United States and Europe in the race for reusable rocket production and scalability.
It is perhaps no wonder that collaboration with incumbent advanced space entities, Europe and America has diminished steadily since collaborating on the European Space Agency's Cluster missions and Galileo satellite capabilities in the 2010s. This is incapsulated in the States' National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2011 barring NASA from significant cooperation with Chinese entities11 and in 2023 for the Europeans by rejecting the opportunity to participate in the Chinese space station in a statement by ESA Chief. Despite this, the ESA still provides lunar- mission support. However, facing exclusion, China engages with alternative space partners, marking a significant shift in dynamics from the era when China was dependent on Soviet expertise; with its new partners, China shares its expertise.
Sino-African relations have largely depended on Chinese strategic and military aspirations. Besides the BRICS forum, China has engaged with individual African space agencies. Notably in 2007, it helped launch NigComSat-1, Nigeria's first communication satellite. It is indicative of where China invests: largely in accelerating the adoption of African states' core technologies to enable them to enter the space services economy. Decades earlier, it was French conglomerate – Matra Marconi Space – that launched Africa's first [broadcast] satellite of similar complexity with Egypt: 1998's NileSat 101. This contrasts China markedly to the United States which has minimal private sector investment abroad and NASA tends to prefer partnering with organisations in the Gulf which have more advanced capabilities and deeper capital pockets.
Figure 115: Baidu proliferation (China Regional Snapshot: Space – Committee on Foreign Affairs, 2022, figure 2)
African Union headquarters were financed by China16, and it has continued to support the development of the African Union's space agency. 2018's espionage allegations provide an insight into how much China trusts its partners. In other multilateral formats such as the Arab League, which is moving increasingly onto Baidu navigation system reliance since the 2018 inauguration of the first international centre located in Tunis17, China is the cost-effective and reliable partner, willing to provide surveillance capabilities. It is replacing European satellite capabilities, American navigation systems and Russian surveillance capabilities in Africa.
China joining Germany, Spain, Italy, France, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Saudi Arabia in setting up a base in Djibouti, its first abroad, is another way in which it is able to entice potential partners: by bundling the benefits of economic development through the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) infrastructure investment with military bases and satellite capabilities. Covering infrastructure and industrial start-up costs at a minimal initial price to governments, makes deals easy to take on and harder to pay back the debt of. This sort of cohesive package is hard to match for any other player, and thus the news of a spaceport development a few years after the base established itself.
Figure 2: Active spaceports in the world (Gopaldas, 2023, figure 4)
However, China also has the same equator problem the Europeans do. There are four launch sites on the mainland which are used at full capacity19, indicating strategists’ desire for fewer bottlenecks on the launch-side of space supply chains considering growing launch frequency20. Offshoring, yet controlling, the capacity for non-critical satellite delivery into space is an example of a big bet China is taking on the industry in Africa. It is cheaper, more effective to capitalise off of the launch of commercial satellites closer to the equator that can be secured with its base nearby.
Perhaps in a self-fulfilling way, such infrastructure commitments in the aftermath of neglect since the start of the 21st century, go a long way in inspiring hope in the African start-up, services, academic and private industry spheres that the African space sector is an emerging reality. Continental ability to develop entry-level satellites, to launch and service them is emerging.
In parallel to African confrontational summits over global banking loan reform and current neo-liberal practices of sustainable development depleting the continent; Africa has been able to, in the context of increasing competition among global heavyweights, demand more from those who it collaborates with. China has somewhat supported local development capabilities with the large repayment costs encroaching in the rear-view mirror, granting it strategic and long-term footholds in African economic futures.
Section 2: Sino-African space sector investment and equitable development paradigms
Figure 3: Map illustrating the emerging activities in planetary and space sciences in Africa. (Asiyanbola, 2021, figure 3)
South Africa, Nigeria and Egypt have first-tier African space competencies. South Africa has made the most progress in developing its sector with educational institutions being deeply tied with the entrepreneurial community and having developed regulatory frameworks22. Start-ups have developed satellites with the agency that have been launching regularly since the 2000s. The space agency benefits from being in an advantageous spot geographically23, useful for satellite observations, used for maritime, climate and security applications. The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) is the
flagship radio project being built in South Africa, with a budget of $2 billion24 financed by an international coalition including South-East African states, China, India, Japan, South Korea, Australia, Canada and Western European countries. It is to be managed at a cost of $150 million annually from England.
Similarly, Nigeria and Egypt have been launching satellites since the 2000s. Nigerian state-owned satellite operator NigComSat sold half of its stake in 2018 via the BRI for half a billion US dollars to China Great Wall, a satellite company, enlisting it with the production of two satellites in the subsequent two years25. Nigeria has increased technological transfer with China; its students heading in thousands to Chinese universities on academic exchanges26 but the state has also increased reliance on China as a guarantor for at least its satellite capabilities in the space sector.
For its part, Egypt was able to negotiate a $72 million space agency grant in 2019 as part of its BRI participation infrastructure relief of $7 billion from China27 and has begun developing its first locally manufactured satellite MisrSat2, with $45 million aid. Previous contracts with French Airbus and Thales for a communication satellite were snubbed28 highlighting the attractiveness of cohesive Chinese investment proposals in Africa.
African space agency budgets are small – totalling a twenty-fourth of China’s as a continent altogether – making international investment attractive to outside stakeholders. At the wealth-driven stage, China is aiding in the development of the African space sector from the investment to the innovation-driven stage. Investment in the sector from all players has accelerated Africa’s academic and entrepreneurial know-how on the continent and spurred public investment into space innovation hubs, like New Cairo's Science Park, on the basis of the emergence of a better educated workforce for such niche research. Satellite operation capabilities have advanced significantly over the past 20 years as technology advanced, prices fell and states bought satellites from Russia, Europe, America, South
Korea and recently China. Despite this, South Africa has been continuously active in astronomy and life science research alongside NASA, ESA and BRICS partners and independently, announcing in 2023 its participation in the Emirati lunar robot mission29 and Chinese lunar base project.
The African space sector is a new technological frontier and idealists attribute similar hopes to it as previous emergent technologies – equitable development and the creation of new markets in which Africans can compete – like the hopes expressed for the ongoing digital transition. However, barriers to entry, namely education and entrepreneurship opportunities, remain high for the markets as does enterprise consolidation across the continent. Despite this, money is flowing in the continent’s sector – it already surpassed $40 billion (in 2020) in valuation, up 50% from the previous year. Great power competition has bettered African FDI negotiation positions in recent years: countries demand the nearshoring of space sector knowledge back to the continent; regaining control over satellite operation and production while developing academic disciplines and the potential for entrepreneurial successes.
Figure 4: Satellites launched by African countries as of April 2023. (Klinger, 2023, figure 3)
While American FDI into Africa has been higher than Chinese investment, the infant space sector has so far been a particular target of Chinese investments due to high yield potential, as is seen with many investments on the continent. Facilitating the deployment of the first satellites of Botswana, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Côte d'Ivoire, Djibouti, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Gabon, Senegal, Tanzania, Togo, and Zambia has been a focus of China's, gaining a foothold in the growing African satellite market in the process, which is growing at a respectable 3.7% year-on-year between 2022 and 2026. Countries are sure to remember the actor that introduced them to space and the African space sector. Such relatively affordable philanthropic acts buy China soft power with these countries it can later leverage.
Ultimately in the last decade, instrumental to the African space sector progressing have been capacity building; local satellite deployment and access to satellite imagery and navigation data facilitated partially through Chinese investment. Capacity building endeavours have allowed the academic and industrial expertise to emerge locally and contribute to the sector. Applying academia to industry has allowed the development of intermediary private sector operators to service the research industry and contribute to the space sector ecosystem. Finally, access to existing satellite data – which the States and Europeans have been more weary about sharing and Russian pitches of spy satellites– has allowed for maritime and climate monitoring; more effective urban planning and access to precise navigation tools. All drivers of satellite-based economic growth potential.
Section 3: Looking ahead: the Sino-African space sector investments mature
The African Union's Vision 2063 provides impetus for continued space industry development. More competition in a single African market with regulatory standardisation and intellectual property rights protections would lead to more knowledge-transfer and opportunities for new waves of African space start-ups that can work in an eco-system of space agencies with diverse expertise under the coordinating organisation of the continental African Space Agency. Increased digitisation will allow people to gain access to the space sector in their everyday lives by using space applications like weather forecasts or seasonal maritime fish migration patterns for fishermen.
Recognition by other global players of African and global space economy potential may encourage them to counter Chinese influence in the African space sector, like with the BRI by the US, G7 and EU. Reactions should hopefully focus on offering alternative, sustainable growth models of investment not curtailing China’s development plans.
China established a strategic footprint in the African space sector and now has influence over multiple space sectors. Diversifying launch-pad capabilities outside the mainland should soon be a reality for Beijing, joining its competitors in off-shore rocket launch capabilities. China's bottom- feeder investment strategy ensures core capabilities are developed before vanity projects are attempted – there are elites to target for business in Africa, but China chooses not to do so as it does domestically promising space-tourism capabilities. The costly and time-consuming endeavour of focusing on core infrastructure and knowledge development may take time to become visible in the sector.
However, we can look at current Chinese and American investment in the Gulf monarchies' space sectors, the current status quo there and envision what lies ahead for the Africa's space sector. China develops local know-how via FDI investment in sectors of interest to Gulf monarchies trying to diversify their economies from oil – it has done so in communications via Baidu, in investments in artificial intelligence and by constructing a nuclear powerplant in the UAE32 but has so far been unable to entice the Gulf monarchies to accept significant capital to develop their state space capabilities.
The players without capabilities but with capital are choosing to partner with NASA. Partly due to the military delivery implications – they rely on the US significantly for military weapons to counter Iranian influence in the region (also true of Europe and Russian instabilities). Nonetheless, it provokes consideration of whether this may be due to them seeing American technological capabilities as superior and what other reasons are behind these strategic decisions.
Firstly, the NASA collaborative effort carries with it international prestige that can attract investors to non-state-funded space enterprises. Secondly, the States have established expertise in protecting intellectual property and fostering a regulatory environment welcoming to private space industry players who emerging space markets can hope to attract.
By contrast, China has a little by comparison of ground-breaking private space actors on the scale or vanity level of America. It has a poor track record on intellectual property protection and mutual trust of countries it cooperates with. Mainly, however, it is yet to be seen whether the bets China is hitching on the development of the African space sector will pay off.
The lingering question may cement China’s role in other regions of the space sector to the one it has taken in the Gulf so far: relegated to the construction of educational infrastructure, running space communications and producing satellites with growing private capital investment while the high-tech innovation and scientific missions to explore the universe occur in the US-allied state agencies.
Current Sino-African dynamics are skewed very differently. China’s tendency toward long- term debt-ridden infrastructure projects and commitment to developing local knowhow are enticing but have the potential to create circular space sectors reliant on Chinese pockets of development with strains on both sides of the supply chain rife for exploitation.
The mines many satellite components are dug up from can be found in the Democratic Republic of Congo where, as increasingly across the continent, China occupies a dominant role in new mineral extraction developments, while satellite development may be local, their deployment is reliant on Chinese propulsion to reach orbit. Idyllic aspirations of the equalising and liberating African space sector seem a ways off for now.
In conclusion, in the near future China will continue to strengthen its navigation and communication satellite data technological rollouts greatly improving connectivity and mobility on the continent. The role of BRICS countries in the African space sector will be interesting to watch develop as there may be inter-BRICS investment competition especially between China and India playing out in the space sector. Africa will continue to experience its greatest rapprochement to space– many new countries can take pride in having a satellite of their own and inspire the population. Capital flows through the sector are strengthening while collaborating with state and non-state actors for research and development. The societal interplay between the types of technologies China provides countries through its satellites and which can be used to surveil populations by military- authoritarian leaders, especially in the Sahel region, will be evolving – regime coup-proofing techniques may be advanced. Further research could discuss security dimensions to Sino-African Astropolitics; African regional geopolitical moulding through Chinese investment projects in the space sector; the global space science research rivalry or the roots of the tactical considerations that either African or Chinese space strategists make when planning.
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