In line with our vision “to be the technological university of choice in East and Central Africa, we are proud to announce that we are dropping another huge milestone in the bag! The International University of East Africa (IUEA) applied to the Uganda Communication Commission (UCC) to permit us to build the first educational satellite. For a name, she will be called the Satellite One (IUEA UGA. SAT 1).
The space programme is one of the pillars of technological innovation for the country and Africa. The programme will give us the chance to build the kind of technology we need in education, security, agriculture and tourism. Modern-day education and the fourth industrial revolution mentality mandates an inter-disciplinary approach to problem-solving and this is precisely what the project is aimed to provide. The satellite project will involve the combined scientific, engineering and practical dexterity of IUEA’s faculty of science, faculty of engineering, department of environmental sciences and IUEA’s soon to be an operational department of agriculture.
The state minister for higher education has acknowledged IUEA’s request to the government for a license to allow our operation in Uganda’s space and we are optimistic that the project would have taken flight by 2022.
The satellite will be of great help not only to education but also to the nation’s agricultural sector. The satellite will help in forecasting the weather patterns so that the nation’s farmers would work with the data from the satellite to decide the most economical farming cycle for each crop to help reduce the crop failure which occurs as a result of climate change.
“There’s a plan to address the possibility of opening up a national space centre for Uganda and IUEA is already headed in the right direction”.
– Dr James Kasigwa, the Director of Science, Technology, Innovation Regulation and Bio-safety at the science, technology and innovations ministry.
After its launch, we shall join other notable African institutes like The Federal University of Technology, Akure in Nigeria, the University of Nairobi in Kenya, Stellenbosch University in South Africa, the Cape Peninsula University of Technology in South Africa and French South African Institute of Technology in South Africa that have been involved in the development of satellites that have been launched into space.
By: IUEA Connect
