Rwanda has submitted a request to the ITU to deploy a constellation 327,320 nanosatellites
October 18th 2021
In 2020, following the takeover of the company OneWeb by Great Britain and Bharti Entreprise, the government of Rwanda lost its privileged access to the constellation of OneWeb satellites. Currently, he is attempting a more direct approach, rich in opportunities.
The Republic of Rwanda has submitted a request to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva to deploy a constellation of nanosatellites in low earth orbit. The file, received on September 21 by the specialized agency of the United Nations, indicates that it is a total fleet of 327,320 aircraft.
On the forum.nasaspaceflight.com platform, several speakers question the real financial capacity of Rwanda to support an investment of this scale. Instead, others believe that the small East African country may not have any real intention of deploying anything, but may have brought the request on behalf of third parties.
In March 2020, when the OneWeb company placed itself under Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the United States, the government of Rwanda, which has been a partner there since 2019, loses its opportunity to make it a player in the country’s digital transformation. . In November 2020, OneWeb was acquired by the British government and Bharti Entreprise. Greg Wyler, its founder and boss is replaced.
But the businessman who has a history with Rwanda, in particular through Rwandatel which he owned until 2006, affirms in an interview given to the aviationtoday.com site in April 2020 his determination for satellite connectivity . “I wouldn’t say I’m no longer in the satellite. I still think that satellite could play a very big role in many use cases ”, he argues.
Rwanda’s quest for ITU approval to launch a constellation of nanosatellites does not exclude the country from having its own ambition to achieve. In a September interview with The New Times , the Director General of the Rwanda Space Agency (RSA), Colonel Francis Ngabo, indicated that ” the space industry generates on a global scale nearly $ 400 billion of income per year. At RSA, we are working to put in place strategies and an enabling environment to attract investment from part of the global space value chain to Rwanda ”.
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