Every time a GIS analyst pulls down a Sentinel image, corrects a coordinate with GNSS, or runs a flood model off an Earth observation feed, they are quietly relying on something most of us never think about. A delicate and evolving system of international rules helps control how outer space is used. That system is called space governance and, according to Thando, an outer space security researcher at the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR) in Geneva, it is “invisible” to most geospatial professionals right up until the moment it isn’t.
Thando’s path into this world started on the ground, quite literally. He studied Geoinformatics and Surveying Engineering at the University of Zimbabwe, worked with the Zimbabwe Land Commission and the Land Loss Prevention Project in the United States, and later earned a master’s degree in Global Development at the University of Manchester.
He has since become one of the more prominent African voices in space policy circles. He is an alumnus of the Mandela Washington Fellowship and the UK’s Prospero Space Fellowship, a former president of OpenStreetMap Zimbabwe, and currently serves as Partnerships Lead for the Group on Earth Observations Youth Community of Practice. At UNIDIR, his work sits at the intersection of security, diplomacy and the everyday infrastructure that African geospatial professionals depend on without a second thought.
We sat down with him to unpack the policy layer that sits quietly beneath every Earth observation (EO) image and every Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) fix, and to ask what happens to that layer, especially in Africa, when it starts to crack.
Security, Safety, Sustainability: Words We Use Interchangeably but Shouldn’t
Ask most people to define space security, space safety and space sustainability, and you will likely get one answer stretched across three terms.
Thando says this is an easy mistake to make. “In some languages and regions there are no separate terms for each,” he explains, adding that even state delegations at multilateral forums sometimes blur the distinctions. But the differences matter.
Security, he explains, is about guarding against deliberate acts intended to harm or disrupt space systems, such as anti-satellite weapons tests, jamming or cyberattacks on ground stations. Safety concerns unintentional harm arising from natural hazards, human error or technical failure anywhere across the space value chain. Sustainability, meanwhile, concerns the ability of all space actors, including countries that have never launched anything, to continue accessing space and the services it provides.
Why does the distinction matter beyond semantics? Consider space debris. A destructive anti-satellite missile test that deliberately shatters a satellite into thousands of pieces is a security problem. Debris resulting from an accidental collision or an old satellite reaching the end of its operational life is a safety problem.
Both create the same physical hazard in orbit, but they demand different governance responses because, as Thando puts it, “separating them is quite important because it speaks to the behaviour of actors.” Conflate the two, and you risk designing a policy that addresses the debris but overlooks the intent, or vice versa.
Protecting the Systems That Power Modern Life
It is tempting to think of satellites simply as tools: communication relays and cameras in orbit. Thando challenges us to consider a different perspective.
“Space has always been a security issue,” he argues, drawing on perspectives that trace this idea back to the strategic ambitions that drove the original space race. What has changed is the scale at which space activities are conducted.
Financial services, logistics, agriculture, disaster response and natural resource management now depend heavily on space-derived data and services. This dependence has reached a point where the denial of those services represents a genuine economic and human security threat, not merely an inconvenience.
That development has direct policy implications for Africa and other emerging space regions. Satellite ground stations, data infrastructure and the space assets they connect to need to be formally designated and protected as critical infrastructure, much like power grids and water systems, rather than treated as optional technological additions.
Mapping the World’s Approach to Space Security
UNIDIR’s response to the information gap is the Space Security Portal, an interactive map showing how different countries approach space governance from a security and defence perspective, a dimension that most existing space policy trackers do not cover. Thando says the portal is already being used by diplomats negotiating at global forums, academics conducting open-source research, and states benchmarking their emerging policies against those of regional peers.
The most striking pattern to emerge when comparing countries on the portal, he says, is the unevenness of treaty participation. Many states, whether spacefaring or not, have signed up to foundational space law treaties dating back to the mid-twentieth century. However, some pivotal instruments, such as the Moon Agreement, have not been adopted by several major space powers. That gap alone reveals a great deal about where the fault lines in future space resource governance are likely to emerge.
What remains consistent across nearly every country profile, however, is the shared underlying goal. Nobody wants a conflict in orbit, even when they disagree sharply on how to prevent one.
Where Africa Stands: Real Influence, Real Gaps and a “Capacity Paradox”
Viewed through an African lens, the picture is mixed but more encouraging than many might assume. Thando points to African states that are “effectively influencing resolutions at the UN”, evidence of a maturing continental voice in a debate long dominated by traditional space powers. At the same time, the limited formal engagement of many other states is also apparent and worth examining rather than dismissing.
What he finds most important, however, is what he calls the “human capacity paradox” in African space governance. He argues that the continent already has deep, relevant skills in engineering, business, politics and international security, but these skills have not yet been sufficiently specialised and redirected towards the space sector.
“Africa has all the chess pieces,” he says. “They just need to be arranged for a win.”
The flip side of Africa’s growing importance as a market for space technology is that the continent is also becoming an arena in which established space powers compete for influence, cooperation and strategic advantage, all at the same time.
If Space Governance Collapsed Tomorrow, GIS Professionals Would Feel It First
UNIDIR runs a project called the Map of Space Threats and Consequences, which brings together research examining precisely this scenario. Thando’s answer is blunt.
“Geospatial professionals would very quickly discover how much they depend on access to space data, not just the data itself. Without functioning governance, that access ‘becomes sparse, incomplete, inaccurate, unusable, unavailable or inaccessible in times of real need’, precisely when disaster management, agriculture, health and climate response need it most.”
His closing line on this is worth reflecting on: “At the moment, space politics is invisible to geospatial professionals.” That invisibility is precisely the gap this article seeks to close.
“Africa has all the chess pieces. They just need to be arranged for a win.” — Thando, UNIDIR
Orbital Congestion: An Engineering Problem or a Policy One?
With thousands of new satellites launching every year, is orbital congestion primarily a technical challenge or a governance problem? Thando’s answer is that it is increasingly both, and the two cannot be separated.
Engineers are designing satellites for end-of-life disposal and developing an emerging “space garbage collection” industry, involving spacecraft designed to capture and dispose of debris. However, the same manoeuvring capabilities, he notes, could also be used to disrupt another party’s satellite, reviving long-standing debates about dual-use and dual-purpose space technology.
Space situational awareness, the tracking of objects in orbit, including debris, raises a similar tension. Tracking data needs to be shared to be useful, but sharing it can conflict with national sovereignty concerns. Increasingly, specialised working groups under forums such as the Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS) in Vienna reflect this convergence, with engineering and policy delegates working in the same rooms rather than along separate tracks.
“Governance underpins engineering,” Thando says, “and engineering cannot exist independent of governance.”
Why Trust Is the Real Currency of Space Security
Confidence-building measures and transparency feature prominently in multilateral dialogue on space security, and for good reason. States are naturally reluctant to share strategic information about their space capabilities, but they also have a shared incentive strong enough to encourage cooperation.
The physics of orbital debris does not respect borders. A destructive event in orbit can have consequences far beyond the actor responsible for it or the orbital region in which it occurs, degrading the usability of space for everyone. This is the mechanism behind the Kessler Syndrome, a scenario in which cascading collisions generate so much debris that entire orbital regions could become unusable.
Understanding this shared risk allows states with fundamentally different approaches to legally binding treaties and voluntary norms to find common ground.
Peaceful Use or Security Concern? The Dual-Use Dilemma
Nearly every Earth observation satellite can serve both civilian and security purposes. The same imagery used to map crop yields, for example, can also be used to monitor military troop movements.
Thando says the distinction is conceptually simple but operationally difficult. It comes down to intent, behaviour and adverse impact, issues that arose repeatedly at the previous year’s Outer Space Security Conference. UNIDIR’s Space Security Lexicon offers a useful vocabulary for understanding the distinction. Dual-use satellites inherently possess both civilian and security capabilities, while dual-purpose satellites could later be repurposed for harmful activities, even if they were not originally designed for that purpose.
Verifying actual intent from the outside is nearly impossible. The system therefore relies on practical mechanisms, including due regard, prior notification, consultation and information-sharing, as indicators of good faith. These measures reinforce the transparency and confidence-building efforts discussed earlier.
Has “NewSpace” Rewritten the Rules?
A growing number of commercial operators, including giants such as SpaceX and Planet, now operate infrastructure at a scale that was once the exclusive domain of governments. This includes proposed mega-constellations comprising thousands of coordinated satellites.
Thando refers to the commonly used term for this era, “NewSpace”, and argues that it has genuinely reshaped governance by drawing commercial actors directly into multilateral forums in both Vienna, where safety and sustainability are prominent concerns, and Geneva, where security and disarmament politics feature heavily.
One legal anchor, however, remains unchanged. Under Article VI of the Outer Space Treaty, states remain internationally responsible for the activities of private companies operating under their jurisdiction. That rule of attribution is one reason national, regional and international regulation has had to evolve more quickly than governments traditionally manage. States cannot outsource their responsibility, even when they outsource infrastructure and capabilities.
The AI Frontier Space Governance Isn’t Ready For
Artificial intelligence already powers satellite operations, collision avoidance and image analysis. However, Thando highlights two developments for which current frameworks are least prepared.
The first is AI-controlled additive manufacturing in orbit. As part of In-Space Servicing, Assembly and Manufacturing (ISAM), self-healing spacecraft could potentially adapt to their environments by using 3D printing to develop new physical capabilities on the fly.
The second, closely related development is agentic AI in space systems and platforms. Such systems could act independently of human operators, whether through preset countermeasures or fully autonomous decisions, some of which could be adversarial.
He also raises a third, less visible concern: orbital data centres. As AI computing infrastructure begins moving into orbit, personal data, which is itself a national security concern, could increasingly be hosted in a domain where no state exercises sovereign jurisdiction over the orbital environment as a whole. This creates challenges for cyber and data protection frameworks that were never designed with such infrastructure in mind.
Back to the Moon: What Geospatial Professionals Should Watch
Having researched lunar resource governance before joining UNIDIR, Thando offers a refreshingly practical perspective on the current rush to the Moon. In the near term, the opportunities for geospatial professionals lie more in engineering than in policy.
The Moon Agreement provides a legal framework for lunar resource use, including in-situ resource utilisation (ISRU). However, the states undertaking much of the current lunar activity have not ratified it, limiting the extent to which the agreement can influence their activities in practice.
Where Thando sees real, immediate demand is in cislunar positioning, navigation and timing (PNT), communications hardware and software, and environmental engineering. These are challenges that need solving now. There is also an emerging field focused on observing the Moon from Earth and orbit, as well as observing Earth from the Moon. For Earth observation professionals, this offers a natural opportunity to transfer existing technical skills into a genuinely new arena.
Satellites or Policy Capacity: What Should Africa Build First?
This is one of the hardest questions in the interview, and Thando does not pretend otherwise.
He refers to a debate borrowed from AI governance: the argument that countries cannot credibly regulate an industry they do not yet operate in. However, he pushes back against applying this argument directly to space, having also argued that states with fewer sovereign space assets have more, not less, reason to invest in governance.
His position is that Africa should prioritise building infrastructure capability while simultaneously strengthening governance capacity, which requires comparatively fewer resources. The underlying goal is resilience and redundancy: enough infrastructure and enough of a governance voice to ensure that international conduct in space does not undermine either.
However, he is candid that the tension does not fully resolve. “An actor with magnitudes less capacity can cause irreparable harm to the space assets of a more capable actor.” Space, in other words, punishes purely individualistic strategies.
Too Many Remote Sensing Scientists, Not Enough Space Lawyers?
Africa is producing far more remote sensing scientists than space lawyers or policy specialists. Thando sees this less as a shortage to panic over and more as a problem of redirecting existing skills.
The continent needs to channel its technical expertise into specialised fields such as space insurance, ISRU law and security-specific policy, while retraining engineers for emerging technical niches such as Rendezvous and Proximity Operations (RPO) and In-Space Servicing, Assembly and Manufacturing (ISAM). He points to South Africa and India as examples of countries that have built strong domestic space business ecosystems through this kind of targeted development.
The right mix of skills, he adds, also depends on which segment of the value chain a country is targeting. Downstream data products, for example, require very different capacity investments from upstream launch infrastructure.
The Myth That Refuses to Die
Ask Thando which assumption about space governance he still hears from experienced professionals, and he does not hesitate. It is the belief that governance matters most to states that already own satellites or have launched something into orbit.
He argues that the opposite may also be true. The fewer sovereign space assets a state has, the more dependent it is on others for space-derived services, and the more it stands to gain from a louder, more active voice in global governance. This is precisely because it has little or no redundancy of its own to fall back on.
The Ground Beneath Space
Asked for the single insight most likely to surprise a geospatial professional browsing the country profiles on the Space Security Portal, Thando points to something deceptively simple. The ground segment.
Ground stations, data centres and telemetry, tracking and control (TT&C) infrastructure, the parts of the space value chain that never leave Earth, are becoming as strategically important as anything in orbit, arguably even more so. Where and how these facilities are hosted and co-located has become a genuine source of leverage in multilateral negotiations. During conflicts, such infrastructure can also present a significant vulnerability, given how much easier it can be to target than objects in orbit.
For African geospatial professionals, the takeaway is consistent. The data layer we work with every day sits on top of a policy layer most of us never look at, until it fails.
Thando’s closing image is worth carrying forward. Africa already holds the pieces needed to shape that layer instead of simply depending on it. What is missing is not capability. It is orientation.
