## 3 Technical Features and Socio-Legal Characteristics of Africa's Satellite Constellation
### Reconstruction of African Territories from Space  
The conclusion that \"Border is Fate\" [32] is true to the extent that the fate of African peoples are continuously changing with court and tribunal judgments and awards since the end of the colonial era. African territories are very often subject to disputed ownership and are continuously before international tribunals for adjudication, the docket of the International Court of Justice is even as of present still grappling with fresh cases and crises arising out of colonial actions over African territories. A legal challenge to British sovereignty of the Chagos Islands has been instituted by Mauritius based on allegations of coercion leading to the giving away of a large swathe of Mauritius territory before independence. See _\"Legal consequences of the separation of the Chagos Archipelago from Mauritius\"_ in 1965 (Request for Advisory Opinion) available at: [[https://www.icj-cij.org/en/case/169](https://www.icj-cij.org/en/case/169)]([https://www.icj-cij.org/en/case/169](https://www.icj-cij.org/en/case/169)); [PERSON], \"Chagos Islands: UK used secret threats to keep Chagos Islands, court hears\" _The Guardian_ Monday 3 September 2018 available at [[https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/sep/03/mauritius-takes-uk-to-court-over-chagos-islands-sovereignty](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/sep/03/mauritius-takes-uk-to-court-over-chagos-islands-sovereignty)]([https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/sep/03/mauritius-takes-uk-to-court-over-chagos-islands-sovereignty](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/sep/03/mauritius-takes-uk-to-court-over-chagos-islands-sovereignty)). Even in peace time boundary management of vast territories require joint and sometimes separate teams of technical personnel who have to faithfully follow and trace the boundary line through difficult terrain or on maritime zones. Indeed it is widely recognised that European colonialism continues to underlie most territorial disputes in Africa. Recent examples include the Nigeria-Cameroon dispute over the Bakassi Peninsula; the Gabon-Equatorial Guinea dispute over the islands of Mbanie, Cocotiers, and Conga in the Corisco Bay; the Mauritius-United Kingdom dispute over the Chagos Archipelago; and the Comoros-France [33]. With geospatial sciences and space satellite technology, legally significant geographic facts can be determined with exactitudes and relatively cheaply. Legally significant facts and truths increasingly turn on evidence derived from geodesy, remote sensing and other relevant geoscientific ground data. The geospatial sciences have several levels of manifest legal usefulness. Geodesy, the science concerned with the shape of the earth, for instance, has international, regional and of course, national benefits [34]. Thus, the need for geospatial products in Africa is of an urgent and increasing nature. Verification of locations by traditional surveying means is fraught with many limitations. Without space applications traditional surveying is comparatively costlier and fraught with quantitative difficulties. Multiple teams of bilateral surveying and boundary commissions are at work simultaneously across the continent. Surveying vast territories has more than its fair share of dangers. Surveyors are often caught between hostile villagers and communities, security agencies of neighbouring states and wild animals. The prospect of getting irretrievably lost in wild terrain are real and has occurred quite too often, for a particularly harrowing tale of starvation while on a surveying mission see [PERSON] _Mapping the World_[34]. Geospatial products also now afford African states the crucial luxury to reconstruct boundary lines in a way more faithful to impartial geographic and scientific realities.