## 3 Technical Features and Socio-Legal Characteristics of Africa's Satellite Constellation
### Discovery of Relict Boundaries through Satellite Imagery
The height difference between the bottom of the ditch and the upper rim of the bank on the inner side can reach 20 m. The diameter of this enormous fortification in a north-south direction is approximately 40 km and in an east-west direction, 35 km. The walls of the ditch are recorded as unusually smooth. The system of walls are thought to encircle the ancient Ijebu state. The total length of the discovered fortifications in this area alone is said to exceed 6000 km [87]. It was not just that Kings of Benin such as [PERSON], [PERSON] reigned between 1440-1473. Enjoying full sovereignty, he traded with foreigners including the Portuguese [91] built and maintained secure walls; it is more importantly significant that they maintained their empire very much in the tradition of progressive and sophisticated societies found elsewhere in Asia, Europe and the Americas. It is suggested that further evidence of this can emerge through careful remote sensing investigations of African cities. Quite unbecoming inscriptions of 'otherness' may be found in the writings of older authorities like [PERSON], who wrote: \"The Negro, exhibits the natural man in his completely wild and untamed state. We must lay aside all thought of reverence and morality--all that we call feeling--if we would rightly comprehend him; there is nothing harmonious with humanity to be found in this type of character [...] They have no knowledge of the immortality of the soul [...] the devouring of human flesh is altogether consonant with the general principles of the African race\" [92]. Nothing defeats the idea that Africa was a black hole of underachievement in terms of spatial awareness and technical matters or that it has little cultural heritage sites to offer, more than the discoveries of actual sites through aerial imagery recorded by scientific methods. The promise of the discovery of even more relics and archaeological sites is certainly deserving of further investigation and more investment into earth observation and remote sensing by African states. Through these aerial imagery scholars can retrace and find corroboration and validation for the accounts of some of Europe's first explorers. The Dutch who visited the city of Benin in present day South-Western Nigeria described a highly civilised town with sophisticated spatial lay out and city planning:  
The town seems to be very great. When you enter into it, you go into a great broad street, not paved, which seems to be seven or eight times broader than the Warmoes street in Amsterdam.... The king's palace is a collection of buildings which occupy as much space as the town of Harlem and which is enclosed with walls. There are numerous apartments for the Prince's ministers and fine galleries, most of which are as big as those on the Exchange at Amsterdam. They are supported by wooden pillars encased with copper, where their victories are depicted and which are carefully kept very clean. The town is composed of thirty main streets, very straight and 120 feet wide, apart from an infinity of small intersecting streets. The houses are close to one another, arranged in good order. These people are in no way inferior to the Dutch as regards cleanliness; they wash and scrub their houses so well that they are polished and shining like a looking-glass [93; 94]. Similarly the accounts given by British colonial officers of their encounter with Old Ningi debunks the myth of an architecturally undistinguished pre-colonial Africa. The conquest of Old Ningi was described thus:  
Old Ningi was a nineteenth century cult settlement opposing Kano, Zaria and Bauchi from its hill fortress base using up to 4000 cavalry. Its mud walls were built on stone-based parapets and presented a complex defence strategy, which the larger kingdoms were unable to breach. It was captured by the British using a local traitor to show a secret way in near the beginning of the 20 th Century [87].