{"id":35296,"date":"2011-10-05T07:41:24","date_gmt":"2011-10-05T05:41:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=35296"},"modified":"2011-10-05T10:07:16","modified_gmt":"2011-10-05T08:07:16","slug":"need-for-new-space-business-model","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/technology\/35296-need-for-new-space-business-model.html","title":{"rendered":"Need for new space business model"},"content":{"rendered":"

The South African National Space Agency (Sansa)<\/a> has called for a “developmental agenda” in the provision of satellite services from outside Africa.<\/p>\n

Sansa raised concerns that while the contracting and licensing terms for those services were favourable to South Africa, it was not the same case in the region.<\/p>\n

The organisation’s chief executive Sandile Malinga aired those views on Tuesday during a panel discussion at the ongoing 62th International Astronautical Congress in Cape Town.<\/p>\n

He was one of the panelists along with Andile Ngcaba<\/a> chairman of Johannesburg-based Dimension Data<\/a> and Nigeria’s Seidu Oneilo Mohammed<\/a> of the National Space Research and Development Agency among others.<\/p>\n

The topic centred on policies, objectives and expectations by African space agencies.<\/p>\n

Malinga said their expectations on space were shaped by South Africa’s national priorities.<\/p>\n

He said that space activities had many benefits such as helping in disaster management as well as staving off unemployment which currently stood at 25 percent.<\/p>\n

He commended about a hundred companies in the country who were involved in the space industry saying they were doing a good job.<\/p>\n

Malinga said the country was ready to form global partnerships in order to speed up its space programmes.<\/p>\n

Citing SA as the only country with active space programmes, he highlighted that contracting terms for satellite services from outside the continent were not favourable to the Southern African region.<\/p>\n

He said it was SA’s duty “to reach out to its neighbours” and a developmental business model on contracting satellite services should be put in place.<\/p>\n

“We can change the model of doing business going forward,” he said.<\/p>\n

According to Ngcaba, Africa was a big market for space services as global powers were already on the continent exploring for gas or oil.<\/p>\n

As a growing market, he said that African space agencies and the large industry should work together.<\/p>\n

“We need global partnerships. No entity can work alone. Nobody has unlimited resources,” he said.<\/p>\n

The need for partnerships were also highlighted by Mohammed, who indicated that Nigeria was losing about $I50 billion in “capital flight” per year on acquisition of satellite services.<\/p>\n

He said that they were set to collaborate with SA on the development of satellites.<\/p>\n

On the sidelines, Patsa Khotso, an engineering student at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT) told BuaNews that he was proud to be part of a group of students who built a small satellite at the university.<\/p>\n

Khotso said that he built a subcomponent of the satellite which was unveiled last Friday and is now set for launch into space.<\/p>\n

“I’m excited. The project brought young people together. This is an interesting field for me,” he said. Khotso said the industry should grow in order to create more jobs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The South African National Space Agency (Sansa) has called for a “developmental agenda” in the provision of satellite services from outside Africa.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39,"featured_media":25371,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[36,1691,5362,5358,5360],"class_list":["post-35296","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-technology","tag-active","tag-dimension-data","tag-patsa-khotso","tag-sandile-malinga","tag-sansa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35296"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/39"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35296"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35296\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35298,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35296\/revisions\/35298"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25371"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}