# The Status of Space Weather Infrastructure and Research in Africa
## 1 Introduction
### The African Context  
The African Union (AU) has identified space science and technology as a key enabler of Africa's Agenda 2063 and created an African Space Agency (AfSA). The long-term goal of the agency is to enable Africa to leverage technologies developed in the space sector to address societal challenges, in addition to opening up new frontiers of space applications that could be a basis for the establishment of industries that would provide job opportunities for the many unemployed youths in Africa. Space weather science, in particular, is one of the areas under active consideration by the AU partly due to growing interest in the acquisition and deployment of satellites inspace and also the requirement by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) for the provision of space weather services to the aviation industry across the world [2]. Space weather science has been a growing field in Africa since 2007, the year of the International Heliophysical Year (IHY 2007), during which time deployment in Africa of most ground-based observing infrastructure commenced. The deployment of ground-based observing infrastructure was rolled out through collaborations between African universities and their counterparts, mostly American institutions (such as Boston College, United States Airforce Research Laboratories (AFRL), Stanford University), and Kyushu University (Japan), among others. The deployments have often been accompanied by workshops aimed at African university lecturers and their students, with a focus on data acquisition, data processing, and interpretation. The training workshops, which continue to be held at least once a year, are run jointly through partnerships of the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) and Boston College. Supplementing these efforts is the training provided by the Scientific Committee on Solar-Terrestrial Physics (SCOSTEP). However, despite these efforts, there are still considerable gaps in ground-based space-weather-observing infrastructure in African regions/countries. This hampers the data acquisition necessary for space weather research, hence limiting the provision of products and services that could help address socio-economic challenges. Due to the growing investment in space activities in Africa, including the building of nano-satellites/cubesats and the purchase and deployment of off-the-shelf satellites, there is a growing need for Africa to develop a critical mass of expertise to help mitigate space weather effects on critical space-based and ground-based technological infrastructure. Space weather effects could be felt in the aviation industry, power grid, land/sea and air navigation, and high-frequency communications, among other technological systems. Evidence of space weather's impact in Africa includes South Africa's space-weather-induced loss of its homemade Sumbaldi-laSat satellite in September 2011 and of several high-voltage power transformers following the impacts of the Halloween storm of October 2003 on power systems through geomagnetically induced currents [3]. These events created awareness in Africa about the realities of space weather's impact on investments in the space sector and power sector, and they also brought to the fore the need for thorough space weather modelling and forecasting to prepare Africa to mitigate the consequences of space weather impacts on technologies. Space weather preparedness is important not only for Africa but indeed the rest of the world. Space weather preparedness is underpinned by three elements: designing mitigation into infrastructure where possible; developing the ability to provide alerts and warnings of space weather and its potential impacts; and having in place plans to respond to severe events. This kind of preparedness calls for high-level research and national and international coordination.