{"id":87479,"date":"2010-02-16T19:57:59","date_gmt":"2010-02-16T11:57:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/south-african-government-becomes-majority-owner-of-private-satellite-operator\/"},"modified":"2010-02-16T19:57:59","modified_gmt":"2010-02-16T11:57:59","slug":"south-african-government-becomes-majority-owner-of-private-satellite-operator","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/south-african-government-becomes-majority-owner-of-private-satellite-operator\/","title":{"rendered":"South African Government Becomes Majority Owner of Private Satellite  Operator"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>[02-16-10] The South African government has purchased a majority share in <strong>SunSpace<\/strong>, a private, domestic spin-off satellite development research company, in an effort to boost the country\u2019s space program, state cabinet officials confirmed Feb. 16.<br \/>\n&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The South African Cabinet approved the deal to buy 55 percent to 60 percent of the company through a vote held Feb. 11, and the transaction must clear reviews from South Africa\u2019s ministries of finance, trade and industry, and science and technology. According to a Feb. 12 statement from South African government officials the departments are set to approve the purchase.<br \/>\n&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; SunSpace, the manufacturer of South Africa\u2019s 81-kilogram Earth observation microsatellite, Sumbandila, already was an integral part of South Africa\u2019s space industry. The company developed by the government, to provide South Africa with space technology and data services.<br \/>\n&nbsp;&nbsp; The government purchase was forecasted by a statement released by South African Department of Trade Chief Nomfuneko Majaja in July, who told the country\u2019s parliament that he hoped that \u201cSouth Africa would be in a position to be a launching state in five-to-10 years time.\u201d<br \/>\n&nbsp;&nbsp; In July, the <strong>South African National Empowerment Fund <\/strong>(NEF) invested $6.4 million in SunSpace to improve its competitiveness in the aerospace market, according to a statement released by NEF, which called the move \u201cone of a series of recent investments aimed at rapidly increasing black participation in strategic industries and enterprises.\u201d<br \/>\nSunSpace CEO Bart Cilliers said his company has been negotiating the deal with the South African government for the past two years. \u201cWe did so because the satellite business is geopolitically sensitive,\u201d Cilliers said in a statement. \u201cMost clients are governments, and they want to know that the manufacturer has the support of its home government. This deal shows solid government support and assures the stability and longevity of the company.\u201d <br \/>\n&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; South Africa also may be using the deal to establish an independent military satellite communications program, which was described by Brig. Gen. Ian Fordred of <strong>South African National Defence Force<\/strong> (SANDF) as the country\u2019s major space challenge. \u201cIn the early 1990s, we decided to go down the C-band route to support our military operations in Africa, specifically, our peacekeeping missions in the DRC, Burundi and Sudan because the C-Band gave us the biggest footprint over Africa,\u201d Fordred said in an interview with Satellite News. \u201c\u2026 The biggest challenge was not having access to military satellites, but utilizing commercial capacity. We were forced to look at commercial satellites.\u201d<br \/>\n&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Fordred also said that many of South Africa\u2019s frustrated military satellite personnel, \u201cleft the National Defence Force to pursue careers in the commercial environment, so we are quite heavily reliant on our civilian contractors to assist in the maintenance of our satellite systems.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[02-16-10] The South African government has purchased a majority share in SunSpace, a private, domestic spin-off satellite development research company, in an effort to boost the country\u2019s space program, state cabinet officials confirmed Feb. 16. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The South African Cabinet approved the deal to buy 55 percent to 60 percent of the company through a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-87479","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87479"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=87479"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87479\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}