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Harmonizing Space Law across the African Union: The African Space Agency and Regulatory Fragmentation in Nigeria, Kenya, and South Africa
Subject area: Science,Engineering and Technology · Area of research: Space Technology and Space Regulation
Abstract
The African Space Agency (AfSA) was inaugurated in Cairo on 20 April 2025, nine years after the African Union (AU) adopted its first continental space policy. Its Statute gives it a mandate to promote, advise and coordinate. It gives it no power to license, inspect or sanction. This article asks whether an agency built this way can narrow the gap between national space regimes that already differ in institutional design, licensing approach and legislative maturity. It compares Nigeria, South Africa and Kenya using statutes, draft bills, treaty status lists and institutional documents, and it reads that comparison against the AU’s earlier attempt at continental harmonization, the 2014 Malabo Convention on Cyber Security and Personal Data Protection. Malabo took nine years to enter into force and, on the AU’s July 2024 status list, had been ratified by 16 of 55 states. None of the three case-study states was among them. I argue that the three regimes differ less in their rules than in where they place regulatory authority, and that this institutional divergence, more than any single rule, is the main obstacle to harmonization. The article closes by proposing a sequenced alternative to an early treaty: model licensing standards with peer review, a pilot of mutual recognition among willing states, and a binding instrument only after the model has been tested.
Keywords
African Space Agency; space law; regulatory harmonization; NASRDA; South African Council for Space Affairs; Kenya Space Agency; Malabo Convention
How to cite this paper
@article{1724799,
author = {Mohammed Nana},
title = {Harmonizing Space Law across the African Union: The African Space Agency and Regulatory Fragmentation in Nigeria, Kenya, and South Africa},
journal = {Iconic Research And Engineering Journals},
year = {2026},
volume = {10},
number = {5},
pages = {1073-1080},
issn = {2456-8880},
url = {https://www.irejournals.com/formatedpaper/1724799.pdf},
abstract = {The African Space Agency (AfSA) was inaugurated in Cairo on 20 April 2025, nine years after the African Union (AU) adopted its first continental space policy. Its Statute gives it a mandate to promote, advise and coordinate. It gives it no power to license, inspect or sanction. This article asks whether an agency built this way can narrow the gap between national space regimes that already differ in institutional design, licensing approach and legislative maturity. It compares Nigeria, South Africa and Kenya using statutes, draft bills, treaty status lists and institutional documents, and it reads that comparison against the AU’s earlier attempt at continental harmonization, the 2014 Malabo Convention on Cyber Security and Personal Data Protection. Malabo took nine years to enter into force and, on the AU’s July 2024 status list, had been ratified by 16 of 55 states. None of the three case-study states was among them. I argue that the three regimes differ less in their rules than in where they place regulatory authority, and that this institutional divergence, more than any single rule, is the main obstacle to harmonization. The article closes by proposing a sequenced alternative to an early treaty: model licensing standards with peer review, a pilot of mutual recognition among willing states, and a binding instrument only after the model has been tested.},
keywords = {African Space Agency; space law; regulatory harmonization; NASRDA; South African Council for Space Affairs; Kenya Space Agency; Malabo Convention},
month = {November},
}