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3 China draws Africa into its
orbit By Bright B Simons, Evans
Lartey and Franklin Cudjoe
ACCRA, Ghana -
In 2003, China's sole international commercial
satellite launcher, Great Wall Industry Corp , won
a project bid to build, launch and maintain a
satellite on behalf of an international client.
The contract, signed in December 2004, will, once
executed, represent China's first export of a full
satellite package. The client was the West African
state of Nigeria.
The 5-ton Chinese
Academy of Science and Technology-built DFH-4
clone satellite, with an impressive 15-year life
span, is
known as Nigcomsat-1. It
will, upon successful launch, be the only
transcontinental telecommunications satellite
under the control of a sub-Saharan nation. By the
time the Nigcomsat-1 contract was approved,
Chinese international commercial launch activities
had been suspended for about five years, and the
country's space industry was gearing up for a
spectacular return in 2005.
The success of
Great Wall's bid for the US$450 million project
amid intense competition from 21 companies from
countries including the United States, Israel,
France and the United Kingdom showed where China's
advantages in the international arena resided:
space cooperation with developing countries on
commercial terms. Not long after, Chinese firms
landed deals in Brazil and Venezuela too, and
continued to lobby through their government's
diplomatic channels to enter South Africa, where
key rival Russia continues to hold sway.
Beijing, increasingly indulgent of its
budding multinationals, is putting in extra effort
to transform the Asia-Pacific Space Cooperation
Organization, a regional talking shop, into a more
action-oriented South-South collaborative
partnership. Turkey, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Peru,
Iran, Pakistan and Thailand, all members of this
forum, became targets of China-style quiet
diplomatic lobbying.
Russia is currently
the partner of choice for most developing
countries in commercial space relationships worth
several hundred million dollars. China is hence
looking at some very lucrative returns, should it
succeed in convincing the Third World about the
competitiveness of its offerings. Africa could
provide it with a picture of success. It could do
a lot with the Nigcomsat-1 project to showcase its
readiness for massive aerospace projects. No
stone was therefore left unturned in the design
phase of the Nigerian satellite. It was designed
to exude the latest in technological
sophistication: radiation-hardened technology,
onboard software reprogrammable ability,
multi-factor safety feedback mechanisms, high
fault sensitivity, and a top-of-the-range on-board
switch-control operating system to ensure
exquisite payload-rocket integration efficiency.
The communication components of the satellite
included a full 28-band spectrum across C, Ku, Ka
and L transponders.
According to some
observers, China even went to the extent of
influencing a Sudanese company, Elrased Electronic
Trading and Investment Ltd, to broach a $250
million equity investment to enhance the value
proposition of the project to the Nigerian public.
Elrased's boss, Major-General Khalil Mohd
al-Sadiq, is a key fixture in the Sudanese ruling
establishment whose devotion to Chinese interests
in Africa knows no bounds.
In December
2005, Nigcomsat-1 successfully passed a
preliminary design review with flying colors and
was scheduled to launch in mid-2006.
From
this point onward, what had been a smooth and
plain-sailing process began to hit a few hitches.
First, reported funding constraints prevented
launch in 2006, and takeoff aboard an LM-3B
vehicle from Xichang launch center was rescheduled
for this January. But January passed without a
full resolution of the funding situation,
compelling another postponement, this time to the
end of March. Xichang launch center has been
designated as the launch site for this and 11 of
the approximately 20 Chinese launches that will
occur in the 2007 window. All parties assured the
media that the recurrent delays had absolutely no
technical components.
However, a more
serious development that somewhat tarnished
China's carefully choreographed exhibition was the
failure after the launch last year of Sinosat-II
and later of Sinosat-III, both of which were based
on the same Chinese Academy of Science and
Technology-built DHF-4 platform that Nigcomsat-1
has been modeled on.
None of these bumps
on the road, however, as far as most observers can
tell, have dented the enthusiasm of either party -
China or Nigeria - for the project. In two weeks
or so, we shall know how Nigcomsat-1 will fare.
One thing that is already evident is that
the Chinese space industry is transforming very
fast. The old era of ideological motivation, when
the song "The East is Red" blared from newly
launched satellites to applause from ground
audiences, died in the 1970s. The Europeans were
shell-shocked to learn that China's answer to
America's Global Positioning System (GPS) and
Europe's proposed Galileo, Beidou, would not be
strictly limited to military uses, but was also
likely to deploy commercial applications. All
along one of the financial strategies underpinning
Galileo had been the prospect of selling
subscriptions to Chinese firms. Well, too bad,
China just warmed to capitalism.
Chinese
space leaders are acquiring an impressive feel for
commercial opportunities in the global
marketplace, and they shrewdly recognize that
while the rich pickings are to be found in
managing outsourced projects on behalf of Western
corporations, it makes a lot of sense to build
capacity by taking on challenging tasks in the
developing world. Furthermore, several factors
make it especially rewarding to seize market share
in those parts of the world, particularly in
underexposed Africa.
For instance, one of
the key recent trends in the global commercial
satellite sector has been the downward slide of
America's market share of the launch and
manufacturing segments. As space trendologist Ryan
Zelnio has recounted, US dominance of the industry
has plunged from 83% of the manufacturing segment
in 1999 to 50% last year (representing a drop from
an average 25 successful international contracts
in the peak year of 1996 to about 10 in 2006). The
key beneficiary has, however, been European firms
like Astrium and Alcatel, not China. Zelnio
attributes the US decline to unnecessary
bureaucracy in the name of national security.
China, obviously, was a key trigger of this US
paranoia. Recently, Great Wall Industry was
sanctioned by the US State Department for
allegedly aiding Iran's
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