• Commentary Africa · Asia · Geoeconomics
  by Michele Danesi
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The People's Republic of China's (PRC) engagement within the African continent is pursued by adopting a comprehensive approach, including, among others, investment and economic cooperation agreements, people-to-people exchanges and security partnerships. The necessity for several countries across the continent to attract more investment and increase their share in critical technologies has led to growing interest in the space sector over the years and to perceive China as a major partner in this regard. The PRC's involvement in the African space economy started with the first contracts it obtained from Nigeria for satellite manufacturing in 2004; since then, Beijing's footprint has expanded: China signed bilateral and multilateral partnerships, secured about 20% of foreign satellite contracts in the continent, integrated the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) with a Space Information Corridor that "connects BRI partners to China's growing space capabilities", and built (or funded the construction of) critical infrastructure to sustain the development of space-related activities.

China-Africa space cooperation: agreements and partnerships

In 2005, Beijing won its first contract to operate an orbital launch for an African state providing Nigeria with its first communication satellite, NigComSat-1; since then, it has launched the first communication satellite for several other nations, including Algeria in 2017, Ethiopia and Sudan in 2019. As of today, the PRC has 23 active bilateral space partnerships with African countries, as well as the African Union and the Arab League. These partnerships focus mainly on: investments in national space programmes; contracts for satellite manufacturing (or joint development) and launch services; training programmes for personnel; joint development of Earth observation (EO) missions; and sharing of data collected by satellites.

Some African states' partnerships with China have been more proficient than others. Nigeria has consistently collaborated with Beijing on the NigComSat program, and in 2018 it obtained additional $550 million of funding from the Exim Bank and China Great Wall International Corporation (the national space program's arm for international cooperation) for two additional communication satellites. Ethiopia was able to obtain in 2016 a $6 million grant (about 75% of total project cost) from China International Development Cooperation Agency (CIDCA) and the China South-South Cooperation Fund to develop a remote-sensing satellite, then launched in December 2019; since then, the country obtained financing to build another satellite, as well as two ground stations that receives data from Chinese and Ethiopian EO satellites. Egypt obtained different rounds of aid to carry out several projects: the EO programme EgyptSat, an Assembly, Integration, and Testing (AIT) Center in New Cairo City, and the development and launch, in December 2023, of the remote sensing satellite MisrSat-2. Other African nations, instead, have developed more limited partnerships, regarding contracts for the realization of a few satellites (such as Botswana or Malawi), the reception of satellite imagery (as for Gabon) or the construction of space stations or other types of ground infrastructure (Namibia, see below). In 2025, the two main highlights in China-Africa space partnerships regard: the creation with South Africa of the world's longest intercontinental quantum satellite communication, a 12,900 kilometres communication link that utilizes the PRC's Jinan-1 quantum satellite; and the signature of a Memorandum of Understanding with Gabon to boost its EO capabilities by granting it access to high-resolution satellite imagery (2 to 5 meters accuracy). Finally, of the 12 partner countries of the International Lunar Research Station project - the Chinese-led research base on the Moon planned to be established by the next decade - 3 belong to the African continent, with Senegal being the last signatory nation, joining South Africa and Egypt in September 2024.

The role of EO satellites and LEO constellations

One of the fields in which PRC's technologies are most needed by African partners revolves around EO activities, as their monitoring and imagery function can impact climate and environmental issues, as well as security concerns, such as wars, terrorism and violent extremism. Climate change cooperation is indeed a pillar of China-Africa relations, and security issues are deeply interconnected with environmental concerns in the continent. For this reason, several of the satellite development projects listed above (and many of those regarding countries not mentioned) revolve around EO with the purpose of improving agricultural development and planning, climate change monitoring (to address, for example, consequences of massive droughts) and meteorological observation. About the latter issue, China has extended through the services of its Fengyun meteorological programme to 36 countries in the continent, "significantly enhancing Africa's meteorological capabilities" by helping institutions on the ground in disaster management situations. Fengyun is a multi-orbital constellation that carries out "full-spectrum, high-spectral and quantitative observations" and, in the case of 12 Chinese partners in Africa, it is paired with a shared "Emergency Support Mechanism in Disaster Prevention and Mitigation", an instrument already activated in 11 separate occasions in the past, such as during the tropical cyclones Idai and Kenneth, which hit Mozambique and bordering countries in March and April 2019.

A realm of possible future cooperation is that of satellite internet through the two LEO mega-constellations China is developing, Guowang and Qianfan. As of March 2025, a total of 25 African states already has access to Starlink - Chad was the last one to sign with Elon Musk's company in July 2025 -, which is granting extended internet access at a competitive price (a Starlink kit costs on average $400 dollars in Africa, while those of competitors such as OneWeb are higher) and filling a demand for satellite connectivity in areas where ground infrastructures for internet connection are relatively more scarce. The history of China-Africa cooperation in infrastructure and telecommunications - technological areas deemed critical by the African counterparts, while China could enjoy both great capacity and high profits - has given analysts good reasons to believe that Guowang and Qianfan will open new and profitable possibilities for both Beijing and its partners. The two constellations will give the PRC once again the chance to present itself as an alternative to US and European systems, drawing especially from the solid partnerships it has on the continent.

The PRC also managed to export to its partners in Africa the services of its satellite navigation constellation, BeiDou. Compared to its Russian, US and European counterparts - respectively GLONASS, GPS and Galileo - this system goes beyond conventional positioning and integrates both a special "return link" function to send confirmation messages to people in distress, as well as a more effective anti-jamming system, able to better adapt to complex environments. Satellite navigation and positioning systems are particularly critical for African countries not only in traditional fields such as transport, agriculture and environmental monitoring, but also in the context of large-scale infrastructure, as they "often face issues such as insufficient geographical information accuracy, weak traffic management capabilities, and uneven resource allocation". For these reasons, BeiDou is already employed in a variety of situations across the continent. An example is the South Africa-Zambia cross-border transport monitoring system: the South African company BRISK FAST has installed BeiDou on cargo vehicles connecting the two countries to obtain real-time data on their shipments to improve transport efficiency and safety management. Furthermore, BeiDou was also adopted in the case of the Addis Ababa-Djibouti Railway to improve the quality and safety of railway construction, and it was installed in autonomous-driving agricultural machinery and drone plant protection systems in Mozambique. Finally, it is also currently employed in a variety of other fields, ranging from maritime and aerial rescue operations to smart mining solutions.

Dual-use ground infrastructures

The African continent proves essential to China also in relation to investments in the ground infrastructure segment of its space activities. A study conducted by the International Institute for Security Studies mapped the relevance of the PRC's global infrastructure in the telemetry, tracking and command (TT&C) sector is expanding to ensure the country's signals intelligence (SIGINT) capabilities, a domain that serves for both civilian and military purposes, in line with the Chinese policy of "civil-military fusion". This network of infrastructure includes 18 overseas TT&C stations over different continents, 4 of which are located in Ethiopia, Kenya, Namibia and South Africa and are involved in funding and/or carrying out the construction of stations, data sharing, construction and deployment of on-site technicians. Furthermore, to complete the network and ensure permanent efficiency, has deployed the four-vessel "Yuan Wang" fleet, which consists of ballistic missile and satellite-tracking and telemetry vessels that stationed in a number of ports in the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans between 2015 and 2025. Two ships of the fleet (Yuan Wang 5 and Yuan Wang 7) have recently stationed twice in the South African port of Durban aiming at monitoring the re-entry of the "secret" military spaceplane Shenlong, first in March 2023 (it called back in the Cape Town port two months later, after the successful landing of the spacecraft) and then in August 2024.

International observers, particularly in Europe and the US, are closely monitoring the security implications of this "global surveillance network" that the PRC is consolidating in Africa in the space realm. Particularly, their concerns regard Chinese access to data and images collected from the above-mentioned space facilities they have set up on the continent and the dockings of the dual-use Yuan Wang "spy ships" in 2023 and 2024.

Conclusions

Chinese cooperation with African counterparts in the space sector is fully inscribed in Beijing's strategy of relations with the continent: it offers an opportunity for inflow of investments in a high-tech sector - with civil, military and industrial applications - that its partners find attractive in order to improve autonomy, enhance technological advancement and boost skilled labour in exchange for financial returns and political support, as in the case of wider participation in the ILRS project. A challenge to investment and capacity building relationship is posed by the format of cooperation: in the past, the PRC has already established bilateral partnerships for manufacturing or infrastructure building in Africa, ending up developing the initiative with Chinese companies, workforce and technical expertise, who would be relocated to the site for the specific purposes of the project, only to move back once the job was completed.

An example has already taken place in the space industry: a Reuters inquiry that went viral last February reports, from sources on the ground, that the PRC-Egypt agreement to establish the first space lab for production of homegrown satellites - which is part of a Space City built near Cairo that also comprises a satellite monitoring center and two space telescopes - has actually been featuring much work carried out by Chinese engineers and workforce instead of Egyptian personnel. Of the three EO satellites envisioned by the agreement, the first two (Horus-1 and Horus-2) were built, assembled and launched in China, while the third (MisrSat2) was "the first one to come out of the Cairo Plant", but all components were manufactured in the PRC and then shipped to Egypt for assembly and testing.