France, Sept. 14 -- Across Africa, national space budgets have grown to $800 million (€702 million), up from less than $300 million (€258 milion) in 2018.

This is according to Temidayo Oniosun, founder of Lagos-based consultancy Space in Africa.

That is a tiny fraction of the world total, which was $132 billion (€113 billion) in 2024, 60 percent of it from the United States.

But the sector is growing: the African Union has a new continental space agency in Cairo, and the number of countries on the continent with a space programme has jumped from eight to more than 20 since 2018, Oniosun says.

For African nations, the questions of independence and access are crucial in an industry still dominated by non-African space ...