The Space-Faring Africa: Commercial Space Industry and its Readiness for Innovation-Driven Investment

Abstract

The African continent presents undeniable differentiating factors to play a key role in the space economy of this century. Over the past decades, its economic pulse has sustainably raised, fomenting research efforts and investment in the development of space technology. Evaluating these factors is a recurrent task for decision makers and investors, and it consists of a thorough and difficult process of gathering non-standardized data and economic indicators from different sources. This becomes significant when aiming at comparing distinct countries concerning their potential to succeed in the space sector. As such, we propose a novel approach to increase the understanding on the multitude of factors that make a country attractive from the investment perspective in the space sector. To do so, we gathered opinion-based data from young nationals by leveraging the Space Generation Advisory Council network in Africa. We reached for distinctive representatives of the network and showcased a methodology to formulate a qualitative classification according to the country's conditions to promote fruitful investments in the space sector. In this way, we introduce the Space Business Readiness Level — which showed that most of the interviewed countries currently present either favorable or increasing conditions for investment.