(Ecofin Agency) - During the visit of Emmanuel Macron, the French president, in East Africa on March 11-14, 2019, Ethiopia and Kenya signed space cooperation agreements with France.

Thanks to these cooperation agreements, both countries can boost their competencies in the various space sectors such as telecommunications, meteorology, cartography, climate change, agriculture and defence.

The agreement between France and Ethiopia was signed in Addis-Ababa on March 13 by Solomon Belay Tessema, managing director of the Ethiopian Space Science and Technology Institute (ESSTI), and Jean-Yves Le Gall, president of French Centre national d’études spatiales (CNES). This agreement is about the Observatoire spatial du climat (OCS), created to measure the impacts of climate change and develop space apps for water management, forest and crop monitoring, health services as well as the development of connectivity. The agreement with Kenya was signed on March 14.

During the visit, the French president also discussed reinforcement of space cooperation with the African Union Commission. They also discussed the operationalisation of the Panafrican university’s space science institute.