Rwanda Utilities and Regulatory Authority (RURA) Director-General, Lt Col Patrick Nyirishema said that the workshop is very important not just for Rwanda, the East African Region but also to the whole continent as a satellite is very critical and very important technology for communication.
He said that Africa is a continent that largely relies on satellites.
Nyirishema said that being able to launch a satellite, countries need first of all to understand and being ready to implement regulations.
“We have realized that the overall cost of launching satellite is going down. However it’s all just about the knowledge and the resources to launch a satellite,” he said.
The training is facilitated by experts from International Telecommunication Union (ITU).
“We are very privileged to have ITU which agreed to send experts to train so that they can have complete understanding of what is required to be able to success for launch of a satellite from process of starting point,” he said.
He said the workshop is addressing the problem of how to secure arbitral location and the process you go through to launch a satellite.
Nyirishema said that the satellite is very important for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to be able to have the means to link the various parts of the World and to monitor development, targets, to be able to collect dairy information, analyse it and helps to inform laws and regulation and all development interventions as captured within the SDGs.
Akim Falou Dine, expert from ITU said that the future of Africa in having a satellite is very brilliant for communication because Africa is very big and can help to access communication and get connected to the World.
Akim emphasized that the satellite can help in the implementation of SDGs where a poor country can access direct information.
“The satellite can also benefit in tele-medicine, tele-education, for GPS and for agriculture, it’s really important,” he said.
African countries which have managed to send a satellite in the airspace are Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana, Egypt and Morocco.
Dr. Ali Simba, the Executive Secretary of East African Communication, a regional body in East African Community said that the region is looking at having a regional satellite and they are putting it in their strategic plan of the next three years to see what they can do to have own satellite for communication.
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