New Sansa head looking at new opportunities for the agency

27th January 2017 By: Keith Campbell - Creamer Media Senior Deputy Editor

Newly appointed CEO of the South African National Space Agency (Sansa), Dr Val Munsami, will be actively seeking to identify and exploit potential areas in which to grow the activities and income of the organisation. “Our baseline budget is constrained,” he points out. “We are matching inflation. The key issue is: How do we use the assets and capabilities we have, to leverage more?”

Right now, he is focused on concluding the agency’s programme, and achieving its targets, for this financial year, which ends in a little more than two months; and on planning for the next financial year and implementing Sansa’s next Annual Performance Plan. “We have one [Performance Plan] already, but I think we have to look at it,” he says. “I’m convening a Strategy Session next month to look closely at what the mandate of Sansa is, whether we’re structured correctly to meet that mandate and whether we’re delivering on that mandate or not.”

He notes that, while Sansa falls under the Department of Science and Technology (DST), it is not just an agency of the DST; in reality, it is an agency for all government departments. “Our user base is very broad. Our satellite imagery and datasets are meant to serve a very wide range of government departments and agencies,” he highlights. “The question is: how do we recoup some of the costs involved? Discussions are ongoing but there are some indications that other government departments may be willing to help share the costs.”

He points out that, prior to the creation of Sansa, various government departments separately bought satellite imagery from international suppliers, but since the space agency was set up, it has bought all the imagery (under multiuser licences, instead of the previous separate single-user licences), thereby saving government and other departments a significant sum of money. “So we hope they will be in a position to help us with our imagery costs.”

He emphasises that the legislative mandate of Sansa includes a focus on developing cooperation with local industry. “This requires cooperation with the private sector. So there is potential for us to explore public–private partnerships.”

The agency’s main industry-involving programme at the moment is EO-Sat1, the country’s latest earth observation satellite project. The prime contractor for this is currently State-owned Denel Dynamics SpaceTeq, which currently consumes 60% of the EO-Sat1 budget. But the other 40% has to go to other companies, including in the private sector, to help stimulate and develop the local industry. Moreover, Munsami hopes to be able to help develop local industry beyond the satellite programme, perhaps in cooperation with the Department of Trade and Industry, the Industrial Development Corporation and the Technology Innovation Agency.

“Our mandate also includes satellite communications and satellite navigation and positioning,” he cites. “These are areas we’re not completely focused on at the moment and there is an opportunity for us to look at them very carefully. This could have implications for Sansa’s structure.”

And then there is Africa – the rest of the continent offers a potentially large growth area. South Africa has been involved in developing an African space programme. An African space policy and space strategy have already been developed and approved at last year’s African Union (AU) summit. At the summit, the heads-of-State asked the AU Space Working Group to develop a governance framework and an implementation plan. (Munsami is the current chairperson of this group.)

The agency also needs to elevate its profile. “I think there is a lot of room for improvement in increasing our visibility across government and society,” he states. “We are financially constrained, so we need to look at, to explore, innovative solutions for this.”