Critically assessing space sector development in Africa – Part 3
Governments in Africa will likely be influenced by the trend of governments around the world increasingly intervening to develop their national space sectors. They should, however, carefully consider their approaches to intervention before committing to them. Stakeholders, in turn, should critically assess government initiatives; they should assess how these initiatives align with their own goals and then react to them accordingly. One way to critically think about space sector development initiatives is to consider whether they are “enabling” or “steering” market activity. Both approaches have potential positive and negative consequences. Stakeholders can better assess how to react to space sector development initiatives if they consider the extent to which the initiatives “enable” or “steer” market activity.
Below is the third part of a three-part article on this subject. To see the rest of this article, please find the first part here and the second part here.
“One can think of the ‘enabling’ and ‘steering’ approaches as having consequences that differ from each other in six ways:
Speed of change; Direction of change; Complementarity of business areas; Supply meeting demand; Entrepreneurialism and; Vulnerability to shocks.”
Critically assessing space sector development initiatives in Africa
When African governments devise initiatives to develop national or regional space sectors, stakeholders should keep these differences in mind to critically assess those initiatives.
It is difficult to illustrate how to apply this perspective in the abstract, so an illustrative example will be used below. Before running through this exercise, though, it is worth keeping in mind that there are many types of stakeholders and there are many types of development initiatives. Stakeholders can, for instance, include policymakers, businesses, nonprofit organisations, and researchers. Development initiatives, on the other hand, can take a variety of forms. They can occur on a local, national, or regional level. They can be specific (e.g. astronomy education in a particular province) or broad (the establishment of an international space agency).
For an illustration of how this critical perspective might work, consider a hypothetical scenario of a policymaker in an unnamed country. The country is about to implement a scheme that will award contracts to firms to provide imagery capturing components for a new Earth observation satellite. The contracts are lucrative, and the firms are thus incentivised to compete to show they can provide the components. It is important for the policymaker that the satellite has a certain percentage of indigenously made components and that it begins providing data shortly; the data will be used to help local farmers improve the output of their agricultural activities.
Reflecting on the potential consequences of this typically “steering” initiative, the policymaker determines that its positive consequences will be quickly building expertise in a specific direction – that is, satellite components. There will also be clear complementarity between the componentry expertise and ongoing business activities in the agricultural sector, since the imagery collection components are intended to help farmers. On the other hand, the initiative’s negative consequences will include stifled entrepreneurialism, dependence on government demand for indigenously made imagery components, and vulnerability for contractors to changes in fiscal policy. The policymaker is principally concerned with showing off how indigenously produced technology helps farmers improve output. As such, the policymaker decides to continue supporting the initiative. At the same time, though, the policymaker begins considering ways to modify the initiative so as to minimize negative outcomes.
The above hypothetical scenario is just one example of how a stakeholder can think of “enabling” and “steering” approaches to government intervention to critically think about space sector developments initiative in Africa. Generally, though, the process is similar, regardless of context. Stakeholders should consider a particular initiative in terms of the six consequences. Stakeholders should assess consequences and compare them to their own goals. Stakeholders should then act intelligently based on this assessment. In some cases, this may radically change their course of action while in other cases it may make no change.
There are many other ways to critically assess space sector development initiatives. So far, for instance, this discussion has assumed corruption is not a major issue. This is obviously not the case in many countries in Africa (or in the rest of the world, for that matter). Corruption, as well as other issues that affect the consequences of government development initiatives, should be kept in mind when stakeholders are thinking critically. Considering the consequences of space sector development initiatives in terms of whether they are “enabling” or “steering” is just one perspective. It is one way to facilitate stakeholders’ critical assessment of initiatives.
As the space sector continues to grow globally, it is likely that African governments will feel pressure to involve themselves in it. Like other governments in other parts of the world, they will create and implement various initiatives designed to spur development of the space sector. Stakeholders, whether inside or outside government, should critically assess those initiatives before they are put in place. In the future, this era will be looked back on as a time when engagement with space diversified across the globe, including in Africa. It is up to stakeholders to critically assess and determine how that engagement should happen going forward.
