The Africa Space Expo in Abidjan last week was pitched not as a rocket show but as a marketplace — connecting start-ups, project labs, and investors around space applications in food security, climate monitoring, maritime security, and connectivity. Ivory Coast signed the Artemis Accords as the 75th signatory, Angola signed a space cooperation letter of intent with the UAE, and the event surfaced a question the continent can no longer defer: Can Africa move from using space technology to building it? Ghana is the clearest case study. Its space ambitions trace to independence-era nuclear science under Nkrumah, who established the Ghana Atomic Energy Commission in 1963. That institution remains the parent body of the Ghana Space Science and Technology Institute (GSSTI). Through a partnership with South Africa's Square Kilometre Array project, Ghana converted a redundant 32-metre antenna at Kuntunse into a functioning radio telescope — launched in August 2017, the first such conversion among South Africa's eight African SKA partner countries. A National Space Policy was approved by cabinet in 2022, launched in 2024, and a dedicated Ghana Space Agency was approved in 2025. The application layer is already producing results. GEOMAIZE, a partnership between GSSTI and Belgium's VITO, demonstrated satellite-based crop health monitoring and classification algorithms for Ghanaian agriculture. But yield prediction accuracy fell short because smallholder mixed-cropping patterns and coarse satellite soil-moisture data don't match well. A follow-up project backed by the French embassy is attempting to close that gap. GSSTI has also used satellite data to track mining-linked forest loss, is working with Nigerian partners on a digital twin for coastal erosion at Keta and Agavedzi, and Japan has provided technical training. The private sector tells a starker story about capital. Victor Tagborloh founded Galaxy Aerospace Ghana in 2020, launched a high-altitude balloon into near space in 2022, designed mini-rockets for GSSTI, trained young people in space robotics and AI, and pushed for Starlink's introduction in Ghana in 2024. Six years in, the company has yet to secure an investor. Galaxy has secured 33,000 hectares at Apam in Ghana's Central Region for a planned space university and ground station but lacks the capital to build either. Galaxy was unable to participate in this year's expo. Bright Atsu Sogbey, president of the Africa Development Council and senior research engineer at the Ghana Atomic Energy Commission, argued the state must lead: "Borrowed technology cannot be sustainable. The state must be in the driver's seat, using the natural resources we have to ensure that, in partnership with the private sector, we can have laboratories and manufacturing hubs for the space industry." He pointed to South Africa, Egypt, and Nigeria — all of which have established space laboratories and manufactured test satellites — as benchmarks Ghana has not yet reached. The continental architecture exists on paper. The African Space Agency, headquartered in Egypt, is intended to coordinate across borders. ASPEX was designed to connect investors with African start-ups and researchers. But the distance between policy ambition and deployed capital remains the binding constraint. GSSTI director Joseph Tandoh frames the priority as building a satellite-data processing hub that can serve ministries across government before Ghana moves to designing and launching its own satellites. Ghana has a small cluster of companies — Galaxy Aerospace, Xavier Space Solutions, Ayeji Aerospace — working in satellite technology, Earth observation, and geospatial services. Engineer Daniel Aboagye called for space science to be introduced into education systems. Tagborloh frames the urgency plainly: "Whatever decision we have to take, especially for human resource capital in the space industry, it has to be now." The policy scaffolding is built. The manufacturing floor is empty.
