Nigeria needs a long-term and stable space policy if it is to turn its growing investment in satellites into meaningful security and economic assets, officials of the European Space Agency (ESA) have said.
Alexander Soucek, head of external relations at ESA, and Thomas Weissenberg, an ESA external relations officer and Africa expert, said space programmes require decades of sustained investment and policy certainty, warning that countries would struggle to attract private capital or build meaningful capabilities without a predictable long-term strategy.
Speaking exclusively to BusinessDay on the sidelines of the International Space Summit in Paris, the ESA officials said African countries, including Nigeria, have the capacity to develop stronger space industries but must first decide which capabilities they want to build themselves and which services they can procure from other countries.
Soucek said the decision to develop national space infrastructure was ultimately a political and strategic choice, rather than simply a question of technical capability. “Everything in space requires not only years, but decades,” he added.
According to him, companies and private investors will only commit capital to space technologies when they have confidence in the long-term direction of government policy.
