France is taking note of Nigeria’s growing ambitions in the space sector, but says formal bilateral cooperation between both countries has yet to begin.
Christophe Venet, director of Europe and international affairs at France’s National Centre for Space Studies (CNES), told BusinessDay that Nigeria has emerged as one of the continent’s major space players alongside South Africa and Morocco, with the country’s ambitions increasingly attracting attention from international space powers.
“Africa is one of the rising regions in space,” Venet said, during a press briefing organised by the French Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs and the Centre National d’Études Spatiales (CNES), France’s space agency, ahead of the International Space Summit scheduled to take place in Paris on September 9 and 10, 2026.
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He pointed to the recent creation of the African Space Agency, linked to the African Union and headquartered in Egypt, as evidence of a new political push by African countries to move beyond individual national space programmes towards a more coordinated continental space strategy.
