Nzimande: R4.4bn earmarked for SA’s space infrastructure hub
Minister of Higher Education, Science and Innovation Blade Nzimande says more than R4 billion has been earmarked for the country’s space infrastructure hub over the next 3 years.
The South African National Space Agency’s (SANSA) pitch was considered one of the top 5 out of the 88 projects that were considered to be bankable during the Sustainable Infrastructure Development Symposium (SIDS) hosted by President Cyril Ramaphosa in June.
The project was chosen out of 270 others.
“Let me take this opportunity to congratulate our South African National Space Agency for having been awarded a significant R4.47 billion in additional funding over the next three years to develop the Space Infrastructure Hub as part of government’s sustainable infrastructure development symposium initiative,” Nzimande said on Wednesday.
“On sources of funding this is an important and a challenging issue that’s why we are saying we’ll have to have multiple sources of funding. Firstly, from the fiscus but obviously we can’t just rely on the fiscus particularly now when we’ve got huge, huge, huge challenges with the shrinking tax base and so on.”
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Nzimande added the space infrastructure hub represented a unique opportunity to demonstrate how science and innovation could contribute to socioeconomic wellbeing.
“The total value of the Sansa pitch was R4.47-billion of blended financing (parliamentary grants, debt and equity financing) over three years, with an expected internal rate of return of 11% over the next ten years.
“Significant emphasis will now need to be expended in repositioning or reshaping the organisation to deliver on these exciting projects, which will require us to work seamlessly, with great speed and efficiency, while ensuring maximum impact, in order to deliver against our promised value proposition to potential investors,” said Nzimande.
The R4 billion project will include a number of satellite builds, a new ground station, an expanded data segment and a new data visualisation centre, the development of products and services for use across all spheres of government, as well as human capital development and training.
