Rwanda Space Agency official discusses priorities as body steps up awareness effort

Rwanda Space Agency (RSA) earlier this week wrapped up a countrywide outreach campaign, bringing an end to a week-long effort to raise awareness among key players in the space industry, including the private sector and academia, in a bid to leverage the fast-growing space ecosystem. The agency was established three years ago, and, according to its leaders, focus is currently mainly on three priority sectors, namely; agriculture, urbanisation, and disaster management. By and large, however, many opportunities remain untapped, according to officials. The New Times’ Edwin Ashimwe caught up with the RSA Chief Technology Officer George Kwizera who shared insights on the gains the agency has registered so far, the impact of the recent awareness campaign, and an upcoming space conference in Kigali. Excerpts: Briefly take us through the journey of RSA, three years after it was established. RSA was established to develop Rwanda’s space sector towards socio-economic development. For RSA to achieve this mission, there was a need to first understand the needs of stakeholders in terms of space-related services. We have, therefore, approached different institutions to understand how space services can contribute to enhancing and monitoring service delivery in specific sectors. It is based on this that RSA initiated a few projects using geospatial data and satellite imageries that are received from partner satellite operators. After receiving the data, RSA uses algorithms and machine learning processes to extract useful information that can be applied in key sectors of the country such as agriculture, mining, and disaster management, among others. How significant has this community outreach been for RSA? Since its establishment, it has been necessary that Rwandans understand the role of RSA, which means understanding in general what it is about space that RSA is doing. It is also crucial that they understand how RSA can contribute to national development, and how they can relate to space in general. Take us through the week, how did it go? Excitement especially from the local government, people didn’t expect that space was so close to them. We saw the will from the local government to work with RSA to leverage the technology in addressing some issues faced in governance. For instance, we can provide the necessary data needed to monitor construction projections, smart agriculture practices, and slums, among others. Students were also excited. The majority thought that space was not for them at the start of this campaign yet they are now sharing very high ambitions. So according to me, this initiative was long overdue. We should have done it before. What was the main message? What we were sharing was the overview of space technologies that touch the socio-economic development. They include navigation, improving GPS, air navigation, precision, and agriculture as well as boosting communication- whether it is the internet, VSAT, voice telephony, and TV services. Equally crucial is the aspect of earth observation, which involves taking satellite photos of the planet for observation purposes, smart agriculture, urban planning, mining, and disaster management. This is done through machine learning and Artificial Intelligence. Through partnerships with Starlink/Spacex, Rwanda is looking to boost internet access, especially in rural schools. This technology is unique and doesn’t require us to deploy complex infrastructure. The government’s decision to venture into space science and technologies is geared more towards boosting socioeconomic development by leveraging the power of geospatial data and analytics to inform decision and policy-making. What is the way forward? It is time that we start taking stock of our priority areas. Space can be useful in several ways and we need to agree on priority areas. This requires us to engage the whole ecosystem to move it forward. Since our establishment, we focused on three areas which are agriculture, disaster management, and urbanisation. But within these sectors, there are so many things to do, that require us to draft a clear framework to start yielding results. Then there is the academia, we must focus on building the capacity of our students. As a parting shot, briefly tell us about the Rwanda Space Conference. Indeed, we have invited international partners for the two-day conference slated for next month. From October 9 through 10, we will be hosting our stakeholders, captains of industry, academia, and local innovators to further understand how space technology can contribute to socio-economic development. We also plan to use it as an opportunity to highlight the key challenges as a country. We have the technology and we need to engage the people who need these solutions. Finally, our role is to also ensure that our space sector is sustainable. That requires us to partner with the private sector and create an ideal environment for their businesses.

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Rwanda Space Agency official discusses priorities as body steps up awareness effort