About ESESA

The key objective of ESESA is to provide the EU and South African authorities with an overall service implementation plan for the initial extension of EGNOS service to Southern Africa (SADC), including a roadmap, an action plan and recommendations. To this purpose the following objectives should be met:

• To elaborate an institutional and financial framework taking account for the market perspectives, cost-benefit analysis for civil aviation in SADC and surrounding pan African issues,

• To set up an operational framework able to safely sustain the service provision,

• To undertake an efficient networking with GNSS stakeholders (users' communities, potential service providers and investors, regulatory authorities etc.) in order to improve their awareness and adherence to GNSS applications as well as to validate an EGNOS service provision scheme that could be easily implemented,

• To conduct preparatory actions to the implementation in order to provide on the one hand the basic system knowledge to actors who will operate the infrastructure and on the other hand to carry out the sites survey of the RIMS to be deployed.

Funding for this project is shared between the EU and South Africa with each covering 50% of the cost.

As a side objective regarding EGNOS service extension projects for the African continent, ESESA will look at relaying the EC strong signals to the GNSS market and stakeholders showing the Southern Africa case as incentive for the other African regions. The promotion of this case study could be assured mainly through the networking activities in enlarging the audience of Network events to decision makers from other African regions.

Within the creation of the South African National Space Agency during 2009 there will exist a functional group for navigation. South Africa wants to be active in the promotion of satellite navigation applications. In order to achieve this for many applications an overlay signal is required especially for real time applications such as air traffic navigation, logistics management, vehicle tracking precision farming etc. As such there is currently no single entity in South Africa taking charge of the establishment of this system. The ministry of Science and Technology (DST) who are the entity responsible for the creation of the space agency has by forming the navigation group within SANSA owned up to this process. CSIR, SAC as the technology arm of the ministry is through this project taking the first steps in establishing the overlay system for Southern African users. The DST has also involved the ministry of Transport in South Africa to ensure a coordinated effort and to prevent a duplication of effort. Traditionally elsewhere in the world satellite navigation is in the domain of transport ministries. The successful completion of this project will also as secondary outcome have the formation of a satellite navigation forum in the country that will bring together the users of satellite navigation in this country into an organised group where the current and future requirements both in technology, processes and certification can be discussed and the future of this technology can be mapped out in a structured way.