Ethiopia has launched its first satellite into space
qz.com
qz.com
Additionally, after a country purchases one, they tend to have their own development path for the future ones.
For example, the Argentinians did their first four satellites with the help of the US (SAC-A, SAC-B, SAC-C, SAC-D), the next two were done by themselves (ARSAT-1, ARSAT-2), two more with the Italians (SAOCOM-A, SAOCOM-B) and one with the Brazilians (SABIA-MAR).
It is a process filled with a lot of politics, questionable monetary interests, and pseudo national pride.
It is the new shortcut process by which countries are entering the space era. Buy a satellite when you don't know what you are doing, then co-build it with somebody, then build it by yourself. It effectively saves you billions in trial and error tests that other countries had to go through... but it really begs the question of when is it truly yours, because if you don’t follow the rules (e.g. taking high res imagery of an area you are not supposed to), “your” satellite can easily be temporarily or permanently disabled... and there goes your 300M
> The 70 kilogram remote sensing satellite is to be used for agricultural, climate, mining and environmental observations, allowing the Horn of Africa to collect data and improve its ability to plan for changing weather patterns for example.
And a second question: how much power do others have over you? I'd your agricultural output or tax system becomes dependent on a certain provider/country they have a lot of leeway over you. Same reason Europe and Russia and China built their own satellite-based positioning system: can't trust the US to keep GPS accessible.
On the other hand any satellite built for you might have the same issue through some hidden software-based off switches.
Again this is second hand info and I don't know much about African politics but telecom is clearly one important reason.
Unless you were having that conversation two decades ago, they 100% were just having you on.
More recent: https://a4ai.org/extra/mobile_broadband_pricing_heat_map-201...
I doubt your intention was to prove my point very loudly, but here we are.
I included the data from 2011 because it includes mobile services cost whereas the other is newer but on data costs.
Not sure what your point is at all other than to be pedantic and obfuscate the general point to be honest. The point being that african telecom costs are some of the highest in the world and this would be one use for a satellite...
5 seconds on Google reveals that, surprise, you're right[1]; mobile data in Africa (as an example) is more expensive than elsewhere especially when considering relative income versus other regions, and there are few providers with limited competition. I think most readers understand what you're getting at, so it's better to disengage if another poster is being impolite!
I do find it impressive how you link an article that talks about the actual solution already being implemented to drive down mobile internet costs in SSA - expanding the existent fibre-optic cable networks like MainOne and stimulating the growth of the local telecoms providers - to apparently support the idea that we're trying to launch satellites to get better internet (or, as per the original post, call rates within a country. Have you ever actually used a satellite phone?)
I am curious about your thoughts on satellites as a particularly cost-effective way to improve mobile telecoms, considering that cellular networks are largely driven by masts that are very much on the ground and (in West Africa for instance), backed by submarine fibre-optic cables.
As an aside, it's extremely interesting to me that in most of my interactions with Westerners they seem rather incapable of finding very easily discoverable primary sources on living conditions in Africa. It would take maybe ten seconds to pull up actual December 2019 call rates and tariff plans from telecoms companies in Ethiopia or Nigeria or Rwanda or Botswana or wherever, but I instead get linked to data that aggregates mobile device and data plan prices from years ago. Then again I suppose that if one unironically believes that people here are stuck unable to call people in the next village it wouldn't occur to them that this sort of information is widely available from Africans themselves.
For example, I use MTN and pay a flat rate of (the equivalent of) $0.0003 per second for calls and $0.011 to send texts. I'm on a 15GB data plan that costs $13.83, and the monthly plans go down to $2.77 for 1.5GB. There are also plans that will give you access to certain social media (Facebook, Twitter, Whatsapp, Instagram, etc) for a month for less than a dollar.
What's the point of using quotes if you're not quoting...
What was actually said: "I dunno how true this is but my african friends have told me that telecom in africa is extremely expensive and calling someone the next village over can have huge charges.
Again this is second hand info and I don't know much about African politics but telecom is clearly one important reason."
If we consider saying "in the midwest fiber optic internet is extremely expensive" to be poverty porn then I suppose I'm guilty...
They were Cameroonian btw...
Or in the 1940's, when communications satellites were first proposed by Arthur C. Clarke.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geostationary_Operational_Envi...
Here’s a real world coverage map from a European earth observation mission, you can see they were able to select and orbit that gives them daily coverage of Europe but only biweekly coverage of Africa: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/David_Slater12/publicat...
- territorial planning (e.g. cadastre and zoning)
- agricultural yield improvements (irrigation and disease detection, crop classification, etc)
- forest fire detection
- illegal mining, illegal deforestation or illegal plantation detection
- pre-disaster planning and post-disaster recovery
and other military activities. the use cases depend a lot on the type of satellite they own
While the US and EU has been focused on donating aid, or through NGOs merely shipping Africans into Europe without much of a plan and then shrugging their shoulders when problems arise, China has been making deals there and investing an utterly staggering amount on an on-going basis into its development and future prosperity.
Some will proclaim "But they'll owe China! That won't end well!", which is shortsighted, lacking in self-awareness and playing into the "everyone that isn't us is the boogeyman" narrative the West likes to maintain.
In the same time that China has been spending its money on African investment, the US has been spending literally trillions on literally baseless wars, directly costing the lives of a countless amount of people in doing so and upending the lives of countless others.
Good on China, and good for Africa. I hope to live to see that continent prosper, although if any success is in sight I'm sure we'll see the US find some reason to deploy the so-richly invested military there.
Exactly. There aren't many Uighurs in Africa, so Africa should be fine.
In seriousness, China's problem is not with all Muslims, it's with the Uighurs as a threat to their national integrity (especially in a region with such strategic importance, bordering Pakistan and India, and containing many railheads linking China to the rest of Eurasia). One of China's largest partners is Pakistan -- which is in its own words an Islamic republic -- and whose government generally turns a blind eye to what's happening in Xinjiang.
I mean, I guess China doesn't so much mind them when they are in Africa. Thousands of miles away. But they're all muslim.
And China doesn't care about who they are dealing with in Africa or anywhere else. As long as you have money, are willing to ignore China's human rights abuses and aren't a threat to the stability of the Chinese governing structures you're all good.
What, exactly, are you trying to say here?
I wonder what else happened in the 60s...
That's being "proclaimed" in that case because there's increasing and obvious evidence of that country's government using debt being to control governments, political decisions and societies:
- https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/25/world/asia/china-sri-lank...
- https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/02/re...
- https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-11-16/are-china-cheap-loans...
- https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/global-opinions/wp/2018/...
- https://qz.com/1223768/china-debt-trap-these-eight-countries...
But it's a bit hard when they trap poor countries in debt, detain millions of Muslims in death camps and try and bully their way into every situation e.g. South China Sea, Hong Kong.
If these really cared about Africa, they would have stopped subsidizing their agriculture. They don't. "Aid" here is a way to hinder development.
China is being scummy, but who's criticizing China here? Europeans who did far worse to the African continent and their inhabitants? talk about lacking of any sense of self-awareness.
And we can be critical of what China is doing is now as well as critical of all of the colonial misadventures over the years.
> And we can be critical of what China is doing is now as well as critical of all of the colonial misadventures over the years.
No, you can't, it's hypocrisy. Whatever you think China is doing, European did 1000% worse by dehumanizing africans for profit.
This is important because the ability to put an object in space is a huge achievement with geopolitical consequences. If you can put an object into space (even low earth orbit) you can put one in Time Square or the Kremlin and no one can stop you. That's why it's a big deal when a country first launches a satellite...
Sorry to be the arsehole here. But it should be made clear Ethiopia has NOT just jumped up on the possible threat scale...
The original title, “Ethiopia has launched its first satellite into space with China’s help”, is still mostly accurate with a generous reading.
The submitted title was strangely altered to drop the key caveat, not sure if the submitter disapproves of “Chinese influence” or something.
But if, say, China were to give away ICBM technology to an ally, for "national security" reasons, so that they could claim plausible deniability...
If you visit the capital, you can't miss the Chinese influence. Last time I was there, a huge Chinese bank building was going up kiddy corner to the Airport in Addis.
BTW, if you haven't visited Ethiopia, put it on your list. It's an amazingly beautiful country.
[1] https://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&...
The Chiense influence is staggering. I'm writing a book about it now. Many, many parts of Africa are developing faster than any of us can comprehend, because we've never seen it.
In the last ~20 years cities like LA and Vancouver have gotten bigger, but they're more or less what they were - there were skyscrapers, electricity, water, freeways etc. Now it's just a bit bigger.
There are hundreds of cities in Africa that have gone from dirt streets to modern city with skyscrapers, 4G internet, subways (or above ground rail), running water end electricity, etc. in just 10 years.
It boggles the mind
[1] http://theroadchoseme.com/africa-expedition-overview & http://instagram.com/theroadchoseme
In the case of Mozambique they gave away fishing rights to China.
No, there aren't. There is exactly one (1) city in sub-Saharan Africa with a modern urban rail system, and it's Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. In the rest of the continent's megacities (Nairobi, Lagos, etc) decent urban transit remains a dream. China has funded a bunch of long-distance rail, but that's primarily for trade (read: exporting raw materials).
But I still tip my pith helmet at you for crossing the DRC by Jeep!
Worth noting is that China's been trading with Africa since at least 200 BCE.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Africa%E2%80%93China_relations
Ethiopia has a population of 105 million, yet it has the gross scientific output of Latvia, a country of only 1.92 million:
https://www.natureindex.com/country-outputs/generate/All/glo...
What is growing is CO2 emissions, at 14.9 million tonnes. By contrast, Latvia emits only 8 million tonnes.
On a per-CO2 basis, Latvia is twice as efficient as Ethiopia in producing science. On a per-capita basis, Latvia is 55x as efficient.
The situation is the same across the world when you compare countries populated by Europeans or East-Asians against everyone else.
Some of my favorite spots in Addis:
1. National Museum of Ethiopia - Lucy and other early humans 2. Mount Entoto 3. Ethnological Museum - Haili Selassie's palace is here 4. Shiro Meda - street vendors. Take a Ethiopian friend to get the best deals. 5. Yod Abyssinian Traditional Restaurant - Traditional music and dancing. Worth going at least once. 6. Addis Ababa Golf Club - Fun place to catch lunch outdoors with some green space in Addis.
Outside:
1. Simien Mountains National Park 2. Church of Saint George 3. Blue Nile Falls 4. Danekil Depression
It is odd that the article mentions these details about the satellite cost, but then completely ignores the much larger cost of the launch itself, which should be on the order of $50M.
edit: apparantly it was a rideshare with 9 satellites total. https://www.space.com/china-long-march-4b-rocket-launches-9-...
Racism has many forms, and this is one. Learn to recognize it and move away from it.
How the hell is this "Ethopian"?
> The EPRDF won the 2010 elections by a landslide, taking 499 seats, while allied parties took a further 35. Oppositions parties took just 2. Both opposition groups say their observers were blocked from entering polling stations during the election on Sunday, May 23, and in some cases the individuals were beaten. The United States and the European Union have both criticized the election as falling short of international standards. Additionally, the EPRDF won all but one of 1,904 council seats in regional elections.
Citizen Lab based out of Canada did a lot of great research exposing it. Of course the Ethiopian gov bought it all from that Israeli “we don’t sell to bad guys” NSO and other western companies.
From my understanding the recent election switched the ruling tribe which has resulted in some positive movement and economic development. One of their big issues recently was the ruling tribe suppressing one the other major ones which resulted in big protests and protestors getting killed. I believe that tribe got into power or at least in a better position.
To be fair, that was done in the US (though not immediately, that came to light), which is why we have FISA.
The FISA rulings and arguments never become public, most of the domestic surveillance warrants are justified merely by the fact the people will never find out they were surveilled and therefore won’t be “harmed” by such behaviour (this was the exact argument which Yahoo was given and lost trying to fight it in one of the only public FISA rulings available online).
Most importantly only the NSA government lawyers gets to argue the grounds for surveillance is justified. There is never a point in time where it is critical analyzed by outside parties so we put 100% of the trust in the FISA judge panel doing their due diligence and standing up for American citizens rights.
But as we saw with the recent Carter Page FBI investigations the feds can feed the FISA courts complete crap and they’ll sign off on it anyway. Multiple times.
I love when people act like this isn’t some rubber stamp court and is actually sufficient to protect Americans constitutional rights. It so obviously isn’t and you’d have to be a serious military authoritarian hawk not to see through that nonsense.
These secret courts live and die because the average person doesn’t understand how it works and the government is just telling everyone to ”shut up and trust us”... including decades of congressman on the House Intelligence Committee.
I never said they were, that's a different discussio. I said the concrete fact of abuse of the national security surveillance apparatus against political opponents when we didn't have even that is why we have FISA (the law, which involves a lot more than the two courts it creates.)
It makes you wonder how China's involvement has lead to do much growth in such short time, while the West had been focused on providing to poor, starving African children for decades. I wonder how much the attitude reflected in the comment about the donating grandma is common and how it contributed to the connotative lack of results from Western aid efforts. Did we deep down not want results, but instead mainly make ourselves feel good while keeping Africa in a position where they can provide that feeling to us? What concretely is China doing that we failed to do? How will this pan out on the long term for Africa? So many interesting topics in here!
If the West ever entered Africa the way China has the politicians leading it would destroyed at home. It’s more domestic politics and history than geopolitics.
Any economic program set forth by the West and any decisive intervention to stabilize a country is promptly accused of being neocolonialism.
I recall a few years ago there was a military coup in Guinea Bissau and the West stepped in to stabilize the country by getting the Community of Portuguese-speaking countries (Portuguese acronym CPLP) involved and send ground troops. Even so, it was decided that the ground troops needed to be from Angola and leave Portugal to handle logistics because having Portuguese troops on the ground would help the narrative that the former colonizer was controlling the fallen democratic government as a sockpuppet.
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.KD.ZG?locat...
Be careful what you wish for: economic growth in Africa is going to come directly at the expense of the local and international environment, in the form of land clearance and coal and oil emissions.
Africa desperately needs to stabilise its population, so that it can focus on infrastructure and capital deepening. The West can help by redirecting all food aid instead towards education, contraception and abortion for women.
I would expect economic development to gradually cause a decline in birth rates? Is there a GDP marker where delta GDP > delta population?
As far as overpopulation, the entire continent of Africa has roughly the same population (1.3b) as India with ~9x the land area so the absolute population density is not dire.
2. If you look at carbon emissions per capita, African countries are relatively carbon neutral. Ethiopia relies mostly on renewable energy and they are also building the largest hydroelectric power plant on the continent. I would expect younger economies to “leap frog” to cleaner and greener tech, having polluted less in total (than countries before them) by the time they attain middle income status.
When a parasite finds a good host, the logic can get really warped.
This is evil.
Would you please not create accounts to break the site rules with?
The food sent over via charity often had a religious conversion implied.
China's belt and road initiative has specific goals in Africa that require something closer to real economic development. With a tether of course, but real development.
GDP per capita: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/average-real-gdp-per-capi...
Literacy rate: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cross-country-literacy-ra...
Life expectancy: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/life-expectancy?time=1950...
Hunger and undernourishment: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/prevalence-of-undernouris...
(I removed the HDI as there was only data from 2000 on.)
So, how is GDP per capita, an important metric, “a bit of a exception” among two other random stats (one of which even accelerated)?
Meanwhile, annual GDP growth rate does seem a lot more steady since 2004: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG?locat...
Supporting the argument, since progress keeps following the trend.
> life expectancy growth accelerated from ~2000 and is slowing down a bit again
Slight waviness superimposed on the overall trend.
> how is GDP per capita, an important metric, “a bit of a exception”
GDP per capita had a trend reversal in 2000, unlike the other metrics.
> annual GDP growth rate does seem a lot more steady since 2004
Most likely a change in methodology that gives less noisy estimates.
Two other less important and less immediate metrics. The “exception” easily outweigh them both.
That one takes off in 1993, about a decade before GDP exploded. Maybe the secret to Ethiopia's growth is just that the population became educated enough to do something useful with the money invested by foreign entities?
I get it, but this "help" has a tremendous cost, a cost many future generations of Ethiopians will pay dearly.
While the "West" has been a mixed bag between good and bad, there's always been some kind of moral "checks and balances" and pressure from their voters. You get none of that with China.
As a voter in the west I don't recall ever hearing candidates talk about Africa (although I haven't necessarily been looking out for it and may be a bit too young depending on when it happened).
Exceptions of course are the oil states, due to strategic need.
China on the other hand does not care who you are or what you do so long as you can pay.
In this way they are really similar to private equity markets, but unlike private markets, they do have a navy and can use it to ensure that far away governments pay back their money.
That's why most of today's "Chinese Influence" are bound with conditions like business deals. It's a better way to help others in addition to capitalist selfish greediness described in many media. It's mutual beneficial. The approach was from hard lessons that donation can not stimulate sustainable growth.
While I fundamentally disagree with China's political model, we may have better luck in third world development deemphasizing democracy and focusing instead on rule of law, stability and cultural cohesion.
1. by owning the (often insane) debt from the programs
2. by getting a lot of Chinese jobs in the country
3. by gaining influence over the country (at the expense of Western influence, if you see this as a competition.
Another problem here, although it’s not a benefit to China, is that the quality of infrastructure built by China is often terrible, making the cost and debt even more problematic.
Now, having said all that, the US isn’t necessarily doing much better. And the poor quality Chinese roads (just as an example) are still infinitely better than the competing local-built roads.
And as for starting a war, China doesn't need to threaten to start a war with a country in order to have the threat of such playing into Ethiopia's leadership decisions. You don't want to piss off China any more than you want to piss off the USA.
On the other hand, developing countries often have bloated bureaucracies and corrupt governments that are heavily involved in the private sector and corporate activity.
The difficulties I mentioned in my original post are those in which the Government is heavily involved. Corporate investment in properly functioning nations are free from (public) political hindrances.
Sri Lanka had to hand over a port for example.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-01-07/sri-lankans-protest-c...
At the same time the Chinese almost religiously mentioned that they saw Africa as an equal partner. It seemed like a very conscious and deliberate strategy.
So my anecdotal summary would be...the Chinese got involved early, went in guns blazing (money wise) and didn't behave like total pricks out for a quick buck but rather like friends and real business partners.
Not just Africa. For US/Western Europe even their close Eastern European neighbors are seen as a lesser continent to be exploited.
An Austrian colleague kept boasting how his dad made a fortune buying illegally chopped wood from Ukraine.
That pretty much sums up how most of the western countries are wealthy today, by exploiting less fortunate countries.
Like you said, it's a modern form of colonialism except it's done with money instead of bullets.
I'd argue that it's more important to understand the context from the African perspective, and not just from the Western or Chinese perspective. Ethiopia, for example, has transitioned from a monarchy to a communist dictatorship/Soviet satellite to a non-communist dictatorship to a semi-democracy in just the last 40 years. They've fought a major war with a neighbor, had several famines, and are in the middle of a massive population boom.
So, "did _we_ not want results" isn't a great the best way to view the situation on the ground. China came in at a time where they had money to burn and found a semi-stable group of countries to trade with. That stability was created via the work of Western efforts and massive amounts of hard work by the Africans themselves.
Also, FWIW, the dead comment was likely just a troll: most (all?) donations to the major relief groups get a thank you letter.
Finally: it's worth noting that it's not like Western influence isn't apparent, either. The US Embassy in Addis is hard to miss and steps from the Prime Minister's palace.