Is Tunisia The First African Nation To Launch A Home-Made Satellite?
On September 29, 2025, a Facebook user @Afrocania made a claim that Tunisia has become the First African Nation to launch a home-made satellite into the Orbit. The post had an image of Tunisia President Kais Saied and an Ariane 5 rocket, with the caption “Big Boy Moves✊🏿 Tunisia makes a footprint to become the First African Nation to launch a home-made satellite into the Orbit. According to the Presido and Point One Kais Saied; In this era of information technology, Africa cannot keep its secrets while relying on Western-provided satellites for technological advancement and communication. To maintain its privacy and safeguard its secrets, Africa needs its own independent technological infrastructure—that is our dream.”
When this report was published, the claim had over 1,800 reactions, comments and shares.
VERIFICATION
Tunisia successfully launched Challenge-1, a nano-satellite built by Tunisian engineers from the TelNet Group in March 2021. The satellite was sent into orbit aboard a Russian Soyuz-2 rocket from Baikonur, Kazakhstan.
Challenge-1 was its first domestically manufactured satellite, but Tunisia is not the first African nation to achieve this milestone. Other African countries had launched domestically built satellites earlier.
The first satellite designed, manufactured, assembled and launched in Africa belongs to South Africa, which launched its SUNSAT satellite in 1999. NigeriaSat-X, designed and built by Nigerian engineers in collaboration with Surrey Space Technology Ltd, SSTL, was launched on August 17, 2011. This was Nigeria’s first domestically built satellite. In 2016, SSTL in Algeria announced the successful launch of AlSat-1B, a medium resolution Earth observation satellite for ASAL, the Algerian Space Agency.
EgyptSat-A launched in February 2019. This was Egypt’s third Earth observation satellite, developed with significant local participation by Egyptian engineers in collaboration with Russia’s RKK Energia. However, Egypt had earlier satellite programs, including EgyptSat-1 (2007), its first Earth observation satellite, built in cooperation with Ukraine and EgyptSat-2 (2014), developed with Russian support but included training and technology transfer for Egyptian engineers.
In July 2017, GhanaSat-1 was launched. It was developed by Ghanaian engineers at All Nations University in collaboration with Japan’s Kyushu Institute of Technology and launched from the International Space Station.
In November 2017, Morocco launched the Mohammed VI-A, though largely built with international partners, Morocco had significant involvement in the project, followed by Mohammed VI-B in 2018.
Challenge-1 makes Tunisia the seventh African country to launch its own satellite.
CONCLUSION
The claim that it was the first African nation to launch a home-made satellite is FALSE. Findings reveal that the first African country to achieve this milestone is South Africa while Tunisia is the seventh after Morocco, Ghana, Egypt, Algeria, and Nigeria.
