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No, Tunisia is not the first African nation to launch locally-made satellite

Nurudeen Akewushola
Nurudeen Akewushola
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screenshot of the viral post claiiming Tunisia is the first African country to launch a home made satellite

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A Facebook user, @Afrocania, has claimed that Tunisia became the first African nation to launch a homemade satellite into orbit.

The post featured an image of Tunisian President Kais Saied and an Ariane 5 rocket, with a caption that read:

“Big Boy Moves Tunisia makes a footprint to become the First African Nation to launch a home-made satellite into the Orbit. According to the Presido and Point One Kais Saied; In this era of information technology, Africa cannot keep its secrets while relying on Western-provided satellites for technological advancement and communication…”

As of the time this fact-check was published, the post had generated over 1,500 likes and more than 90 shares.

CLAIM

Tunisia is the first African country to launch a home-made satellite into orbit.

screenshot of the viral post claiiming Tunisia is the first African country to launch a home made satellite

THE FINDINGS

Findings by The FactCheckHub show that the claim is FALSE.

Tunisia launched Challenge-1, a nano-satellite built by local engineers from the TelNet Group, in March 2021. The satellite was deployed aboard a Russian Soyuz-2 rocket from Baikonur, Kazakhstan. While this marked Tunisia’s first domestically manufactured satellite, it was not Africa’s first.

South Africa achieved that milestone over two decades earlier when it launched SUNSAT in 1999, a satellite entirely designed, assembled, and built by students and engineers at Stellenbosch University.

Since then, several other African countries have launched locally built or co-developed satellites, making Tunisia one of the more recent entrants into Africa’s growing space landscape.

For instance, NigeriaSat-X, developed by Nigerian engineers in partnership with Surrey Space Technology Ltd (SSTL), was launched on August 17, 2011, marking Nigeria’s first domestically built satellite.

Similarly, Algeria, through SSTL, launched AlSat-1B in 2016 — a medium-resolution Earth observation satellite built for the Algerian Space Agency (ASAL).

Egypt also advanced its space programme with the launch of EgyptSat-A in February 2019, its third Earth observation satellite. The project involved significant local participation by Egyptian engineers working with Russia’s RKK Energia.

VERDICT

The claim that Tunisia is not the first African nation to launch a home-made satellite is FALSE. Findings show that South Africa achieved this milestone in 1999 with the launch of SUNSAT, while Tunisia’s Challenge-1 makes it the seventh African-built satellite to reach orbit.

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Nurudeen Akewushola is a fact-checker with FactCheckHub. He has authored several fact checks which have contributed to the fight against information disorder. You can reach him via nyahaya@icirnigeria.org and @NurudeenAkewus1 via Twitter.

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