Poverty-stricken Ethiopia launches $3million space programme

Tuesday August 25, 2015

Astronomers in Ethiopia have built two metal domes that house telescopes, each 3ft (a metre) in diameter. The work was completed two years ago and the equipment - the first in eastern Africa - has been operational since spring. Electrical engineer Ghion Ashenafi is pictured

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High above the crowded streets of Addis Ababa and fields where farmers lead oxen dragging wooden ploughs, sits Ethiopia's space programme.

Two metal domes, perched on top of 10,500ft-high (3,200 metre) Mount Entoto house telescopes, which are each three feet (one metre) in diameter.

Operational for only a few months, the equipment - the first in eastern Africa - has propelled Ethiopia into an elite club of countries to have embarked on a space programme.
For Ethiopia, Africa's second most populous nation, the programme is aimed to give it a technological boost to aid the country's already rapid development.

'Science is part of any development cycle - without science and technology nothing can be achieved,' said Abinet Ezra, communications director for the Ethiopian Space Science Society (ESSS).

'Our main priority is to inspire the young generation to be involved in science and technology.'

ESSS, funded by Ethiopian-Saudi business tycoon Mohammed Alamoudi, was set up in 2004 to promote astronomy.

Its mission plan said: 'To build a society with a highly developed scientific culture that enables Ethiopia to reap the benefits accruing from space science and technology.'

But its supporters have had faced difficulty in getting the programme established.

For the past decade, Solomon Belay, director of the observatory and a professor of astrophysics along with his team has struggled to convince the authorities that space is not a luxury.

The country is still one of the poorest in the world and malnutrition is still a threat.

'People said we were crazy,' Professor Belay said.

'The attention of the government was to secure food security, not to start a space and technology programme. Our idea was contrary to that.'

The $3 million (£1.9 million) Entoto Observatory and Research Centre houses computer-controlled telescopes and a spectrograph, to measure wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation.

It allows astronomy and astrophysics students at the University of Addis Ababa to train on site, rather than taking expensive trips abroad.

'Being poor is not a boundary to start this programme,' Mr Belay continued, adding that by boosting support for science, it would help develop the country.

'Engineering and sciences are important to transform our (traditional) agriculture into industry.'

The site at Entoto, often hidden by clouds during the rainy season and close to the lights of Addis Ababa, struggles to compete with the world's major observatories, including the far larger Southern African Large Telescope in South Africa.

But Ethiopia has plans to build a far more powerful observatory in the northern mountains around Lalibela, far from city lights.

Having recently garnered support for the programme, the Ethiopian government hopes to launch a national space agency - and to put an Ethiopian satellite in orbit within five years, for the monitoring of farmland and to boost communications.

'We are using space applications in every day activities, for mobile phones, weather - space applications are fundamental,' said Kelali Adhana, the International Astronomical Union chief for East Africa, based in Ethiopia.

'We cannot postpone it, otherwise we allow ourselves to live in poverty.'

At Ethiopia's Institute of Technology in the northern town of Mekelle, scientists plan to test the first Ethiopian rocket to go more than 18 miles (30km) into sky, although that it still far from the 62 miles (100 km) frontier of space.

But Mr Belay said: 'We are in no hurry to go to deep space.'

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