## 3 Technical Features and Socio-Legal Characteristics of Africa's Satellite Constellation
### Satellite Evidence of Relics and Self Determination  
Apart from the possible economic and intellectual benefits that geospatial discoveries may bring there are other significant utilitarian purposes it may serve. For instance, geospatial imagery may provide backing for secessionist or irredentist movements. The ability to show the link between seceding people and their land is often crucial to their struggle. The relationship of people to their monuments, shrines, burial grounds and other items of cultural value may be of crucial value in proving distinctiveness as a people and affinity with the land. Evidence of Satellite imagery may assist in many ways to throw light upon the situation. As a writer correctly explains:  
High-resolution satellite imagery can be used for human rights-related documentation, monitoring and advocacy efforts. Imagery is particularly useful for assessing the extent of violent conflict, forced displacement and other human rights concerns in remote, inaccessible or otherwise tightly controlled areas of the world [97]. Theoretically therefore, the discovery of hundreds of kilometres of walled settlement (the Sungbo wall) in Ijebu land may prove significant to the Ijebu people of South-Western Nigeria in many interesting ways. It may be used on the one hand to disprove claims that the erstwhile colonial power Great Britain met a disorganised Ijebuland or that the people ineffectively occupied the land making it _terra nullius_. There may be implications for modern day national politics as well. The same relic feature may also set up a claim by the Ijebus of a right to distinctive existence within present day Nigeria. It is indeed the case that the Ijebus have been clamouring for a separate state within the federation of Nigeria and this relic may be of assistance to their claims. In this scenario the relict boundary of the Ijebu people may be used today to reassert their pre-existing political independence in order to obtain a favourable treatment under inter-temporal laws, Inter temporal law can be broadly described as the branch of law which governs the usage of treaties, codifications and legal acts to the cases and situations which occurred before their creation or entry into force. As eloquently stated in the _Islands of Palmas Arbitration_, (Netherlands v US, 1928) it explains the legal situation that \"a juridical fact must be appreciated in the light of the law contemporary with it.\"A country that wants to contest a boundary may bring to the attention of the court or arbitrators evidence of the existence of the relict walls in order to show pre-colonial territorial suzearainty of kingdoms which may now be straddling international boundaries. At any rate there is much scope for rigorous multidisciplinary enquiries to incorporate this emerging phenomenon of discovery of relict walls and other archaeological features in imagining and reimagining African territorialisation. The newly discovered boundary walls may produce the following effects:  
* Evidence of international boundary marking between various pre-colonial and sometimes pre-modern African nations and kingdoms. * Evidence to shore up claims for self-determination by existing separatist groups and peoples. * Evidence to refute the claim that an area of Africa was _terra nullius_, thus creating the possibility of nullifying the original claim of title to the territory by the pertinent erstwhile colonial power. This is because territories inhabited by tribes or peoples having a social and political organization were not according to inter-temporal law ever treated as _terra nullius_[98]. * Within independent African states the evidence of these relict boundaries may be used to abolish, create and redraw internal boundaries in the course of the nation-building process. * The discovery of these cultural treasures and features contribute to the much needed evidence of a glorious African past which defeats the pessimism that pervades much of coverage of the continent and its peoples.