Kenya will be launching its first software-defined satellite ‘Taifa-1’ this week. This NanoSat has an Earth-observation camera that will be used to provide data on agriculture, food security, conservation, environmental monitoring as well as natural resource and disaster management. This is another very expensive venture that Kenya is undertaking, given the past failures from such endeavors. We have previously observed these ‘satellite venture’ dreams sold to Africans, only to end up as a disappointment to many, in terms of not helping address the many challenges that Africa is currently facing. Is this another one of those pipe dreams that is only beneficial to multinational companies?
Kenya joins 14 other African countries that have already launched at least 52 satellites which are already exploring the space.
Satellite Surveillance data was to help predict diseases.
In 2006, research institutions used satellite data to predict an outbreak of Rift valley Fever. According to NASA, this study helped provide a Rift Valley Fever ‘risk map’ that gave public health officials up to six weeks of warning to prepare for the 2006-2007 outbreak, and thus lessen the impact of this deadly virus. This virus is often spread by mosquitoes, usually after heavy rainfall and collected ground water pools create a great habitat and breeding site for the mosquitoes.
Therefore, if such capabilities were available 16 years ago, why are we not using them to predict the outcome of other mosquito-borne diseases such as malaria, chikungunya virus, and dengue fever among others in Africa? Is the data gathered from them just a preserve of some organizations in Africa? All of a sudden, there has been a notable shift to ‘vaccine-intensive’ solutions for such diseases.
Our investigation found that every time that there were vaccine candidates showing ‘promising results’, coincidentally, an outbreak of the corresponding disease happens almost always in Africa. For instance, we discussed this in a previous article how the Gates-funded dangerous malaria vaccine was being pushed to African children. We are also aware that there are vaccines underway for chikungunya and dengue fever. At this moment we are watching for more outbreaks, given that the satellite surveillance data on such diseases has not been shared with Africans.
Satellite Surveillance data was to help mitigate climate change.
13 years ago, satellites were to be set up to measure the greenness of Kenya from space, in order to help mitigate the effects of climate change and help insure livestock herders against drought and starvation. The satellites would be used to gauge rainfall, and pastoralists that were asked to insure their animals under this pilot project. They were promised that they would get automatic payments for losses when satellite images of the region showed vegetation fades from green. Brown shades would gauge the severity of drought. Whatever happened to that undertaking? At the time of publishing this article, we couldn’t find answers to this. A lot of funds were wasted and nothing tangible materialized out of it. As a result, this did not help in warning pastoralists or Kenyans of the most recent severe drought, where farmers lost their herds, pastoralists lost their cattle, wildlife died and the massive destruction of natural resources and loss of biodiversity in Kenya got us to investigate this new undertaking.
Additionally, in 2018, Kenya launched a ‘cube satellite’ that was to be utilized in weather forecasting, food security mapping, livestock and wildlife monitoring as well as disaster management. The satellite collected information that had the potential to improve agriculture, protect deforestation, provide internet to rural communities or improve disaster planning.
Then how come that this data did not help in detecting the most recent drought, and help save the lives lost both human and animals? How come many Kenyans in rural areas still lack access to internet? How did Kenya choose to proceed to launch another expensive satellite when the previous one wasn’t as beneficial to Kenya? Could there be some corporations mining this valuable data and enriching themselves further? Who is really benefitting from this? Why didn’t the cube satellite help detect the floods that have recently happened in Kenya? And if it did, why was this information not widely shared with Kenyans?
External Actors pushing for digitization in Africa.
Melinda Gates visited Kenya to drum up support for her organization ‘Pathways for Prosperity‘, that was promoting the importance of digitization in Africa. This came after the Gates Foundation and other Gates-funded institutions had been pushing for the Universal Health Coverage for all Africans, as well as the use of innovative technology in Agriculture among other areas.
Similarly, the US Vice President Kamala Harris recently visited Africa and stopped by a farm in Zambia to see how they were incorporating technology and climate change innovation. She mentioned that she had worked to help generate $7billion in private-sector commitments to boost conservation and improve food production.
At this point, it sounds like all these external actors are all reading from the same script. She also expressed how technology would help farmers enhance food production, for instance by using a phone to take a picture of a leaf in a field and technology would then offer suggestions or recommendations on the measures to take. Here is why that was interesting. Her remarks echoed the very sentiments used to promote the need and importance of satellites such as Taifa-1 in Africa. Additionally, her remarks sounded very similar to what Microsoft and Bayer have been doing in Africa in agriculture technology.
Microsoft and Bayer mining information from Africa.
In 2021, Microsoft produced a paper highlighting the opportunities for digitizing agriculture in Kenya. As much as Microsoft tried to express how small-scale farmers would benefit, the real question remains, who really stands to benefit from this digitization?
In November 2021, Bayer inked a new deal with Microsoft Azure to enhance its digital platforms. According to AFN, Bayer is the parent company of the world’s largest digital agriculture platform known as Climate’s FieldView. Coincidentally, when Bill Gates visited Kenya last year, he fervently encouraged Africa to adopt improved technologies that would enhance food security. He openly supported the need for adopting genetically modified organisms (GMOs), given that the Kenya’s President’s at the time had announced that he would be lifting the previous ban on GMOs in Kenya.
Coincidentally, in 2022 the Kenyan government reintroduced the Seed and Plant Varieties Act of 2012 that had been in place as they were planning to introduce GMOs in Kenya a decade earlier, right before a ban was put in place. This legislation prohibits the sharing, exchanging or selling uncertified and unregistered seeds in Kenya. This legislation would punish offenders with a 2year prison sentence or up to $10,000 or both. The government claims that this legislation was to protect farmers from ‘bad seeds’. These punitive seed laws are similar to those experienced by peasant farmers in Haiti, as Monsanto (Bayer) offered to ‘donate Roundup Ready seeds’. A similar incident happened in India as these companies aggressively pushed GMO seed products to poor farmers who could not afford to buy these very expensive seeds each planting season.
Moreover, Bayer continuously collects the farmers’ data freely and these practices are borderline unethical. Also, these farmers are coerced to get certified seeds and fertilizers through their mobile phones, and all this data is collected and may be resold to them as part of an adoption of ‘better practices’ in agriculture.
The fact that the Nanosatellite being launched this week by Kenya will be used to collect data that may ‘help improve food production’ means that these organization(s) receiving this data tend to benefit more. Was this a way for Bayer to expand their agricultural technology database and mine more information about farming practices in Kenya or Africa at large?
Futile Conservation efforts
One of our recent articles expressed how foreign conservancies have harshly dealt with local communities and pastoralists in their quest to fight climate change by expanding their carbon sequestration projects.
One of the largest conservancies in Kenya, the Northern Rangelands Trust(NRT) has been using satellites to tag endangered species and monitor rangelands. However, these efforts have been futile. More elephants, giraffes, zebras and other wildlife have died in the last two years from drought and other causes, and there has been increased conflict and outrage from local pastoralist communities.
The US Department of Interior’s (DOI) committed to provide technical assistance to NRT in monitoring live vegetation in semiarid and arid rangeland environments with satellite remote sensing in Northern Kenya in 2019. Also, corrupt African government officials are known to be behind the destruction of forests and other natural resources, as we reported in this article.
For instance, Kenya’s government approved the shipping of Baobab trees from Kenya to Georgia. These climate-resilient trees survive for more than 3000 years and are a source of livelihood for many Kenyans. African governments have been criticized for destruction of forests such as the Congo rainforest that is the second largest in the world. NRT has faced criticism by Kenyans for the many deaths occurring in the rangelands, how is the satellite data helping Kenyan pastoralists? NRT has earned a lot of money from the global carbon markets and may continue to earn more using the satellite data received.
Mining Healthcare information from unsuspecting Africans.
Newborn children in a rural county in Kilifi Kenya were part of a controversial biometric-based vaccination study trial that began in November 2022 and was to end in March 2023. This surveillance study was developed by Bill Gates-funded Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI) and NEC Corporation.
This was the first time such a study had been done and it involved fingerprinting newborns as a way to manage and monitor their vaccinations, and using voice recognition and facial scanning for caregivers. Our previous article gave the details of this study.
KEMRI and NEC Corporation had previously launched a cloud-based vaccination tracking system that would facilitate the storage of the newborn and caregiver’s information such as vaccination schedule and complete medical history. They had claimed that they would delete all this information after the study, but ironically the government had recently announced the plan to roll-out this biometric-based vaccination nationwide. This is part of the government’s plan to digitize healthcare.
Interestingly, right before this study, NEC Corporation and Microsoft agreed on a multi-year strategic partnership that would see NEC adopt Microsoft Azure as ‘its preferred cloud platform. This was intended to deliver enhanced capabilities and drive sustained digitization’.
Multinational companies have been in the forefront pushing for digitization of all services especially in Healthcare and Agriculture in Africa. However, given the limited internet access in the continent, investors such as Bill Gates have heavily backed low-earth orbit (LEO) satellite internet, including funding Kymeta the internet antenna technology company that would help provide global connectivity. The push for Universal Health Coverage is also a ruse to collect Africans’ data and this information used for research and development of medical interventions such as medicines and vaccines.
Conclusion.
The fast development of Kenya’s NanoSat Taifa-1 is raising eyebrows . The satellite was developed under the guidance of the newly established Kenya Space Agency that was only established in March 2017, given that this agency had already developed and launched another Nano satellite in 2018. With the government’s limited funding, how have they been able to fund all these very expensive projects within such a short time? Ironically, Kenya’s government announced that it could not afford to pay the salaries for all their public service workers for last month. Some workers have had to wait three months without pay, and most of them at least 45 days with no pay. Does that mean that the Kenyan government has its priorities all wrong? Why the rush to get to space when Kenyans can’t afford the current cost of living? This clearly shows that there was external pressure behind this satellite development. Were there any other donors or actors behind these developments?
Here are some of our reasons. Since the establishment of the Kenya Space Agency, there has been a change of leadership and this slows down projects that are underway. One of the officials that worked at the Ministry of Defense in Kenya noted that it was questionable that the Taifa-1 NanoSat was developed that fast. He argued that the government had lamented the lack of funds upon taking office late last year, and many projects had stalled during this time. Also, the government claimed that its main priority at the time was to help provide food to hunger-stricken Kenyans during the severe drought, due to limited finances available.
As we celebrate the engineers that helped develop this satellite, so many questions remain unanswered .It is clear that unnamed external actors have been involved in the massive funding of this venture for it to be ready in such record-breaking time.
It is obvious that large multinational organizations such as Bayer and Microsoft will hugely benefit from the collection of all this data in Africa. Previous satellite data has not helped Africans this far, as a matter of fact they have suffered massive losses from harsh weather changes.
If Kenya could use satellite data to detect droughts in 2009, why did they stop using the satellites then if they were so helpful as they claimed? Why have there been information gaps regarding harsh weather changes like droughts and floods in Africa? Are there organizations that are in position of this data that just choose not to share it? How are they held accountable in Africa? Did the foreign conservancies that use satellite information insure wildlife and get paid as animals died during the most recent drought?
Why is there a lack of transparency and information regarding drought preparations if we are still using these satellites? The difference is that this time as the satellite launch happens, Afribundance will be monitoring the information provided in order to hold these companies accountable and prevent them from hoarding important information from Africans.