The first International Summit on Space, which opened Wednesday, September 9, at the Grand Palais in Paris, is bringing together nearly 120 delegations from around the world through Thursday. While the event is structured around four main themes, orbital security, the space economy, regulation, and scientific exploration, its environmental dimension has stood out with particular force on the African side, through several statements and one concrete commitment.
Angola set the tone on Tuesday by signing a declaration of interest to join the Space4Ocean Alliance, an initiative that promotes the use of space technologies, data, and solutions in service of ocean protection and sustainable development. The signature, made on behalf of Angola’s Ministry of Telecommunications by the director general of the National Space Program Management Office, makes Angola the fifth African country to join the alliance, following Gabon, Kenya, Djibouti, and Senegal. The addition brings the initiative’s total global membership to thirty-one entities.
Beyond this symbolic gesture, Angola’s Minister of Telecommunications, Mário Oliveira, called on the sidelines of the summit for stronger African unity in the space sector. Speaking at a meeting with the African Space Agency held at the Grand Palais, he stressed that this continental cohesion was a precondition for achieving Africa’s shared goals of autonomy, innovation, and development, warning that without it the continent would struggle to make its voice heard among the major space powers. The minister also highlighted the importance of African sovereignty in training skilled professionals and retaining the value of African experts working abroad, an issue that extends well beyond the space sector but finds particular resonance here.
This environmental dimension also found a strong voice in Congolese President Denis Sassou N’Guesso, who emerged on the summit’s very first day as the leading figure of African climate diplomacy. The head of state called for space technologies to be put in service of the Congo Basin, the world’s second-largest green lung after the Amazon, whose satellite monitoring represents a major stake in the fight against deforestation and the tracking of forest ecosystems.
These positions unfold against a backdrop of growing competition for influence among major powers on the African continent, with France and the United States in particular vying for the role of Africa’s preferred space partner. Washington has, since December 2025, stepped up technical meetings with the space agencies of Senegal, Angola, Nigeria, Kenya, Ethiopia, Rwanda, and Egypt, promoting space programs free from dependence on outside actors, a formulation that implicitly targets the Chinese and Russian presence in Africa’s satellite market.
For Africa, the stakes go beyond geopolitical rivalry alone. The continent already has national space capabilities, observation and telecommunications satellites, and continental institutions such as the African Space Agency. What remains is to turn these capabilities into tools genuinely mobilized for climate monitoring, natural resource management, and ecosystem protection, rather than settling for the role of a mere consumer of space technologies developed elsewhere.