Accra, Ghana – The Africa Space Expo (ASPEX), which closed in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, last week, was not designed as a showcase for rockets and astronauts. Organisers presented it instead as a marketplace for space applications in food security, climate resilience, territorial monitoring, connectivity and maritime security, bringing start-ups, project labs and investors together to move ideas from demonstration to deployment.
The event also produced several concrete agreements. The Ivory Coast signed the Artemis Accords, becoming the 75th signatory of the agreement on space exploration and development, while Angola signed a letter of intent on space cooperation with the United Arab Emirates.
But beyond the agreements, the expo highlighted a question that is becoming harder to avoid: Can Africa move from using space technology to building more of it itself?
Ghana offers a clear illustration of both the progress and the gap.
Ghana’s ambitions in space and nuclear science date back to its early years of independence. In 1961, President Kwame Nkrumah’s government initiated a nuclear reactor project in Accra. Two years later, the government established the Ghana Atomic Energy Commission through an act of Parliament with a mandate covering the peaceful applications of nuclear energy.
The reactor project was shelved after Nkrumah was overthrown in 1966, but the institution he helped establish remains the parent body of the Ghana Space Science and Technology Institute (GSSTI).
Joseph Tandoh, director of the GSSTI, traces Ghana’s more recent space programme to a partnership with South Africa.
“Ghana became a partner through South Africa,” he told Al Jazeera. “Through that project, we were able to reconstruct the old satellite antenna at Kuntunse into a radio telescope.”
Through its partnership with South Africa on radio astronomy, Ghana converted a redundant 32-metre (105ft) antenna at Kuntunse into a functioning radio telescope. Ghana became the first of South Africa’s eight African Square Kilometre Array partner countries to complete the conversion, and the telescope was launched in August 2017.
Ghana’s National Space Policy was approved by the cabinet in 2022 and launched in 2024. The government approved the establishment of a Ghana Space Agency in 2025, beginning the process of creating a dedicated national institution for the sector.
The institutional framework is taking shape. The harder question is how Ghana moves from using space technology to developing and building more of it itself.
What Ghana is already doing
At the GSSTI, that transition is already under way.
Tandoh told Al Jazeera GEOMAIZE, a partnership between the GSSTI and VITO, the Flemish Institute for Technological Research in Belgium, has demonstrated how satellite data can be applied to Ghanaian agriculture.
The project monitored crop health and developed algorithms to classify crops. Ghana is also expanding its use of Earth observation data and artificial intelligence for crop monitoring and yield prediction.
But predicting yields has proved more difficult. Tandoh said the model’s accuracy fell short of expectations, largely because many Ghanaian farmers practise smallholder mixed cropping and satellite soil-moisture data are too coarse to capture differences between small farms.
A follow-up project supported by the French embassy and international research partners, is now working to improve the estimates.
The GSSTI has also used satellite data to track forest loss linked to mining and is working with partners in Nigeria on a digital twin to simulate coastal erosion at Keta and Agavedzi. Japanese cooperation has provided technical training while the French government supported work on space legislation that produced a draft now being reviewed by the attorney general.
“We always say that Ghana Space Science and Technology Institute becoming an agency is to position Ghana in a way that we will not only be users of the technology but we will also contribute to designing, developing and building our own tools,” Tandoh said.
The funding wall
Victor Tagborloh founded Galaxy Aerospace Ghana in 2020. Two years later, his team launched a high-altitude balloon into near space, capturing images of Ghana’s geography with clearance from national security and airport authorities.
The company has since designed mini-rockets for the GSSTI, trained young people in space robotics and artificial intelligence and pushed for the introduction of Starlink in Ghana in 2024.
But Tagborloh said the company has yet to secure an investor, six years after it was founded.
Galaxy’s longer-term plans include a space university on 33,000 hectares (82,000 acres) that it has secured at Apam in Ghana’s Central Region as well as a ground station that would give the country greater capacity to monitor floods, mining activity and coastal erosion.
The company is seeking investors for the ground station and a geospatial intelligence platform. Tagborloh said the curriculum is ready and the land is available. What is missing is the capital to turn those plans into infrastructure.
He also argued that Ghana’s position near the equator could provide an advantage for launching spacecraft, potentially reducing the fuel required to reach orbit. Several other African countries share similar geography.
But Tagborloh’s ambition goes beyond launching rockets. He wants Ghana to develop more of the infrastructure and expertise needed to build its own space capabilities.
Who is building the industry?
Bright Atsu Sogbey, president of the Africa Development Council and a senior research engineer at the Ghana Atomic Energy Commission, argued that the private sector cannot build the industry alone.
“Borrowed technology cannot be sustainable,” Sogbey told Al Jazeera. “The state must be in the driver’s seat, using the natural resources we have to ensure that, in partnership with the private sector, we can have laboratories and manufacturing hubs for the space industry.”
He pointed to South Africa, Egypt and Nigeria, which have established space laboratories and manufactured test satellites. Ghana, he said, still lacks the state-backed laboratories and manufacturing hubs needed to produce more of its own components rather than importing them.
“Enough of the talk shop,” Sogbey said. “The next expo should see African satellites assembled on this continent and launching capability for African satellites.”
Engineer Daniel Aboagye, CEO of African Progressive Research and Innovations, said the change must also begin in education.
“With how technology is advancing, Africa must introduce space science into its education systems,” Aboagye told Al Jazeera. “We cannot continue to be consumers of technology we do not understand.”
Kwadwo Dwomo II, CEO of COMCENT Ghana, works on agritech systems that depend on satellite data. He also called for greater government investment in the sector.
Ghana is home to a small cluster of companies, including Galaxy Aerospace, Xavier Space Solutions and Ayeji Aerospace, working in areas such as satellite technology, Earth observation and geospatial services.
Galaxy Aerospace confirmed to Al Jazeera that it was unable to participate in this year’s expo. The company said it hopes to participate in the next expo.
A continental project
The challenge facing Ghana is shared across much of Africa: moving from using space technology to developing and building more of it locally while overcoming limited investment, infrastructure and manufacturing capacity.
ASPEX was designed in part to address that gap.
The African Space Agency, headquartered in Egypt, is intended to provide a continental framework for cooperation while the expo aims to connect investors with African start-ups, researchers and space projects.
But the distance between the ambitions presented at the expo and the resources available to engineers trying to turn them into businesses remains substantial.
For Tandoh, Ghana’s immediate priority is to build the application layer: a satellite-data processing hub capable of serving ministries across government before the country moves further into designing and launching its own satellites.
“Space cuts across all the ministries,” he told Al Jazeera. “We should be able to build and validate our own tools first.”
For Tagborloh, the timeline is more urgent.
“We shouldn’t wait for tomorrow,” he told Al Jazeera. “Whatever decision we have to take, especially for human resource capital in the space industry, it has to be now.”
Ghana has the policy. It has engineers, research institutions and companies trying to build a space industry. What it does not yet have is the capital and manufacturing capacity to turn those capabilities into a domestic industry.
“We have the team, the knowledge, the research and the technical know-how,” Tagborloh told Al Jazeera. “We just need funds.”
