## 3 Technical Features and Socio-Legal Characteristics of Africa's Satellite Constellation
### Reconstruction of African Territories from Space
This is particularly important for Africa because much of African territories were drawn up by people who never had any intimate knowledge of the terrain they were delimiting, Thus, African historians like [PERSON] have rightly concluded that \"At both the continental and regional levels, as represented by the African Union and ECOWAS Commission, African Boundaries inherited at independence have been accepted as fait accompli\" [35]. Colonial delimitation and demarcation of Africa was deeply flawed in very many ways. As far back as 1890, Lord [PERSON] admitted:  
\"We have been engaged... in drawing lines upon maps where no white man's feet ever trod; we have been giving away mountains and rivers and lakes to each other but we have only been hindered by the small impediment that we never knew exactly where those mountains and rivers and lakes were\" [36]. Thus, the providence of older maps much of which are relied on till date is notably shakeable and weak. Traditional demarcation without the use of geospatial sciences and precisely space imagery and GPS technology was understandably much less reliable. Experts warn that using an old map as a means of relocating disputed boundary markers or lost boundaries would likely give a leeway of up to 25 km on the ground. In other words mapping technology has its inherent difficulties; worse still if the map has no geodetic datum this leeway can be greater by a factor of ten or more, which could be 25 km more or less on the ground. This assessment was given by Dr. [PERSON], Registered Professional Land Surveyor (Texas) and Professor of Geographic Information Science in reaction to queries raised by the author on the International Boundaries Research Unit website \"Re Legal Effects of Illustrative maps\" available at ([[http://osdir.com/ml/culture.discuss.boundary-point/2004-08/msg00225.html](http://osdir.com/ml/culture.discuss.boundary-point/2004-08/msg00225.html)]([http://osdir.com/ml/culture.discuss.boundary-point/2004-08/msg00225.html](http://osdir.com/ml/culture.discuss.boundary-point/2004-08/msg00225.html))). Not only were previous mapping exercises far from a precise art, but as Botswana successfully advanced in relation to the maps in _[PERSON] case_, early maps show too little detail or may be too small in scale, to be of value. The World Court has also significantly admitted of colonial maps as follows: \"maps merely constitute information which varies in accuracy from case to case; of themselves and by virtue solely of their existence, they cannot constitute a territorial title\" [37]. Nigeria also argued in its written submissions to the ICJ in the _Land and Maritime Dispute case_, that it was not unknown for colonial surveyors \"to round things up\" in order to save themselves from more detailed but difficult work. [PERSON], in his seminal work on African boundaries, noted of the Benin-Niger border as follows: \"the precise division of the rivers and thus the allocation of islands, remains the subject of doubt since the relevant French instruments are not sufficiently precise\" [38]. Inherited land boundaries notoriously have ambiguous features, whereas space based solutions bring much transparency to the tasks before decision makers. Thus, on mapping and cartographic grounds alone earth observation technology could not have come soon enough [39]. The determination of the African Union to address comprehensively the problems of boundary and frontier determination and demarcation could also not have come too soon as the tensions, skirmishes, Sudan Liberation Army fighters and nomads frequently have deadly skirmishes involving humans and even camels over boundary positions [40] and outright war over boundaries have plagued African states and its peoples, [PERSON], Commissioner for Peace and Security at the African Union in a speech had reason to note that since African States gained independence, borders inherited from colonisation have been a factor of recurrent conflicts, adding that most of these borders were ill-defined and un-demarcated.