African Arguments

Top Menu

  • About Us
    • Our philosophy
  • Write for us
  • Contact us
  • Advertise
  • Newsletter
  • RSS feed
  • Donate
  • Fellowship

Main Menu

  • Home
  • Country
    • Central
      • Cameroon
      • Central African Republic
      • Chad
      • Congo-Brazzaville
      • Congo-Kinshasa
      • Equatorial Guinea
      • Gabon
    • East
      • Burundi
      • Comoros
      • Dijbouti
      • Eritrea
      • Ethiopia
      • Kenya
      • Rwanda
      • Seychelles
      • Somalia
      • Somaliland
      • South Sudan
      • Sudan
      • Tanzania
      • Uganda
      • Red Sea
    • North
      • Algeria
      • Egypt
      • Libya
      • Morocco
      • Tunisia
      • Western Sahara
    • Southern
      • Angola
      • Botswana
      • eSwatini
      • Lesotho
      • Madagascar
      • Malawi
      • Mauritius
      • Mozambique
      • Namibia
      • South Africa
      • Zambia
      • Zimbabwe
    • West
      • Benin
      • Burkina Faso
      • Cape Verde
      • Côte d’Ivoire
      • The Gambia
      • Ghana
      • Guinea
      • Guinea Bissau
      • Liberia
      • Mali
      • Mauritania
      • Niger
      • Nigeria
      • São Tomé and Príncipe
      • Senegal
      • Sierra Leone
      • Togo
  • Politics
    • Elections Map
  • Economy
  • Society
    • Climate crisis
  • Culture
  • Specials
    • From the fellows
    • Radical Activism in Africa
    • On Food Security & COVID19
    • #EndSARS
    • Covid-19
    • Travelling While African
    • From the wit-hole countries…
    • Living in Translation
    • Red Sea
    • Beautiful Game
  • Podcast
    • Into Africa Podcast
    • Africa Science Focus Podcast
    • Think African Podcast
  • Debating Ideas
  • About Us
    • Our philosophy
  • Write for us
  • Contact us
  • Advertise
  • Newsletter
  • RSS feed
  • Donate
  • Fellowship

logo

African Arguments

  • Home
  • Country
    • Central
      • Cameroon
      • Central African Republic
      • Chad
      • Congo-Brazzaville
      • Congo-Kinshasa
      • Equatorial Guinea
      • Gabon
    • East
      • Burundi
      • Comoros
      • Dijbouti
      • Eritrea
      • Ethiopia
      • Kenya
      • Rwanda
      • Seychelles
      • Somalia
      • Somaliland
      • South Sudan
      • Sudan
      • Tanzania
      • Uganda
      • Red Sea
    • North
      • Algeria
      • Egypt
      • Libya
      • Morocco
      • Tunisia
      • Western Sahara
    • Southern
      • Angola
      • Botswana
      • eSwatini
      • Lesotho
      • Madagascar
      • Malawi
      • Mauritius
      • Mozambique
      • Namibia
      • South Africa
      • Zambia
      • Zimbabwe
    • West
      • Benin
      • Burkina Faso
      • Cape Verde
      • Côte d’Ivoire
      • The Gambia
      • Ghana
      • Guinea
      • Guinea Bissau
      • Liberia
      • Mali
      • Mauritania
      • Niger
      • Nigeria
      • São Tomé and Príncipe
      • Senegal
      • Sierra Leone
      • Togo
  • Politics
    • Elections Map
  • Economy
  • Society
    • Climate crisis
  • Culture
  • Specials
    • From the fellows
    • Radical Activism in Africa
    • On Food Security & COVID19
    • #EndSARS
    • Covid-19
    • Travelling While African
    • From the wit-hole countries…
    • Living in Translation
    • Red Sea
    • Beautiful Game
  • Podcast
    • Into Africa Podcast
    • Africa Science Focus Podcast
    • Think African Podcast
  • Debating Ideas
Politics
Home›African Arguments›Politics›A Big Bang and a Bright Idea as satellite coverage strengthened over Africa – By Richard Dowden

A Big Bang and a Bright Idea as satellite coverage strengthened over Africa – By Richard Dowden

By Uncategorised
August 1, 2013
1793
0

We have all seen rocket launches on TV but nothing prepares you for the real thing. From a couple of miles away, the rocket looked like a distant steeple glistening peacefully in the sun. Assembled in an open air viewing platform, we were casually chatting. Then the countdown began. As it reached “Two ….One”, a vast explosion of smoke roiled out from the base of the rocket. A painfully bright tongue of flame spurted downwards and the silver tube rose, then shot towards the clouds with terrifying acceleration. Then the bang hit like a blow to the stomach. The rocket flashed through the clouds losing its boosters, then arced beautifully eastwards across the sky until silence finally absorbed its roar and its booming echo.

This all took place at the launch of the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Ariane 5 rocket from the ESA base at Kourou in French Guiana.  Part of Ariane 5’s 9.6 tonne payload was Alphasat, a satellite built by Inmarsat – a company that provides “˜global voice, data and IP communications solutions’ – that could have a revolutionary impact on the availability of satellite communications services to African countries

At 6.7 tonnes, Alphasat is the biggest satellite built by Inmarsat so far. Two and a half times more powerful than any of the previous Inmarsat satellites, it will come to rest 22,500 miles up, somewhere over the middle of Congo. So far the mission has gone well – something that is not taken for granted among its creators.

Inmarsat was founded 1979 by the International Maritime Organization (IMO) so ships could stay in constant touch and summon help in an emergency. It still handles thousands of distress and safety calls a year. Over 30 years later, Inmarsat continues to be at the heart of maritime and aviation safety systems whilst also growing into a global leader in mobile satellite broadband communications services. The company provides voice and data communications across the world – particularly  in areas where terrestrial systems are non-existent or unreliable. Its communication satellites are now used by organisations ranging from governments to aid agencies and from ship owners to mining companies. Inmarsat is also used by airlines across the world, by journalists reporting from remote regions and anyone outside the range of mobile or fixed line terrestrial telecommunication networks. .

At Inmarsat’s headquarters in London, the map of the world is laid out across a vast screen overlaid with a honeycomb pattern. Each segment represents a sector, small at the equator directly beneath the satellite and elongating as the curvature of the earth extends north and south. This new satellite – Alphasat – will cover the whole of Africa, the oceans each side and most of southern Europe, the Middle East and West Asia.

But looking at the back-lit digital wall map, it is clear that while in Afghanistan, Iraq and other stressed places, usage is very high, there are almost no calls or communications in vast swathes of Africa. And these are also the areas that are not economic for mobile phone companies to build transmitters in. Despite the explosion of mobile phone use across the continent in the last decade, these areas are not covered and satellite communications have been far too expensive.

This, says Rupert Pearce, CEO of Inmarsat, could change soon, as the price of sat-phones and satellite communication may be about to fall dramatically. “The cost per bit is coming down enormously as we become more efficient and more effective with investment in new technology. Sat-phones that once cost $2000 dollars now retail at $500.” The huge capacity and efficiency of Alphasat means that in the predictable quiet periods, airtime could be sold at a discount or subsidised for universities, schools and hospitals by the big corporate users. Massive Online Open Content Courses (Moocs) could be made available to remote villages and schools in Africa. Telemedicine by satellite – already widely used by the shipping and aviation industries – could easily be made available to far flung hospitals and clinics – or even by individuals through mobile phones linked to a wifi hotspot.

Africa has the world’s fastest growing numbers of mobile phones per capita. The bank on your phone and other major innovations in mobile telephony also started in Africa. With a relative lack of infrastructure and very few landlines, Africa has been able to jump a generation faster than most developed countries. Could this new satellite provide even cheaper telephone calls and especially broadband for all in Africa, even in the remotest places?

Richard Dowden is Director of the Royal African Society and author of Africa: Altered States, Ordinary Miracles published by Portobello Books.

Previous Article

Chad’s oil project 10 years on: has ...

Next Article

Nigeria was wrong to host Omar Al-Bashir ...

Uncategorised

Leave a reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

  • Politics

    CPA: Not Comprehensive, Not Peace, Not An Agreement

  • KenyaPolitics

    #147notjustanumber: Reclaiming the hearts of Kenya’s youth a year on from Garissa

  • A solar energy field in Rwanda. Credit: Power Africa.
    Climate crisis

    COP26: Africa is not a single static data point

Subscribe to our newsletter

Click here to subscribe to our free weekly newsletter and never miss a thing!

  • 81.7K+
    Followers

Find us on Facebook

Interactive Elections Map

Keep up to date with all the African elections.

Recent Posts

  • The unaccountability of Liberia’s polluting miners
  • Africa Elections 2023: All the upcoming votes
  • “Poking the Leopard’s Anus”: Legal Spectacle and Queer Feminist Politics
  • Introducing Parselelo and a new climate focus
  • The ‘Hustler’ Fund: Kenya’s Approach to National Transformation

Editor’s Picks

Editor's PicksEgyptFellowsSociety

Egypt’s patriarchy says women don’t ride bikes. These women disagree.

Despite facing harassment, more and more women and girls are defying sexist attitudes and riding bikes and motorbikes around Cairo. Heba Attia first started riding a bike when she was ...
  • kitenge in Kenya

    Can a Chinese import ever be authentically African?

    By April Zhu
    August 21, 2019
  • Bobi Wine and supporters at a rally this September don the red beret . Credit: Bobi Wine.

    To beat or not to beat: Museveni’s big Bobi Wine problem

    By Michael Mutyaba
    October 31, 2019
  • Justice for Noura.

    We Muslim girls know how it feels to be Noura. Now we must fight for her.

    By Aisha Ali Haji
    May 24, 2018
  • Oliver "Tuku" Mtukudzi performing in 2018. Credit: Mário Pires.

    Rest in Power: Oliver Mtukudzi, music legend and pan-African trailblazer

    By Rumbidzai Dube
    January 25, 2019

Brought to you by


Creative Commons

Creative Commons Licence
Articles on African Arguments are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
  • Cookies
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms & Conditions
  • en English
    am Amharicar Arabicny Chichewazh-CN Chinese (Simplified)en Englishfr Frenchde Germanha Hausait Italianpt Portuguesest Sesothosn Shonaes Spanishsw Swahilixh Xhosayo Yorubazu Zulu
© Copyright African Arguments 2020
By continuing to browse this site, you agree to our use of cookies.
en English
am Amharicar Arabicny Chichewazh-CN Chinese (Simplified)en Englishfr Frenchde Germanha Hausait Italianpt Portuguesest Sesothosn Shonaes Spanishsw Swahilixh Xhosayo Yorubazu Zulu