
The 2026 China-Africa Innovation Cooperation and Development Forum was held in Wuhan to discuss the application of air and space remote sensing and Beidou navigation in Africa.
AI-generated summary
China and Africa share common concerns in the fields of agriculture, natural resource investigation and ecological protection. China and South Africa have established a joint laboratory for space information technology.
China News Service, Wuhan, November 11 (Reporter Liang Ting) "China's space information technology with air and space remote sensing and Beidou navigation as the core has been implemented in Africa, providing 'Chinese data' for Africa's economic and social development." The keynote forum of the 2026 China-Africa Innovation Cooperation and Development Forum was held in Wuhan on the 11th, as introduced by Wu Yirong, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Agricultural production safety, natural resource investigation and ecological environment protection are areas of common concern to both China and Africa. Air and space information technology represented by satellite earth observation, Beidou high-precision positioning, aerial remote sensing, and artificial intelligence are important scientific and technological means to support the implementation of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
In September 2025, the China-South Africa Joint Laboratory for Space Information Technology and Applications, jointly built by the Institute of Aerospace Information Innovation of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the South African National Space Agency (SANSA), was approved for construction.
Currently, the laboratory is working with African partners to develop and share Chinese satellite remote sensing data products, and a total of 56,000 scenes have been shared. By coordinating China's high-resolution satellite resources and emergency observation capabilities, we work with the United Nations to carry out emergency response to major disasters in South Africa, Morocco, Kenya, Mozambique and other countries. Up to now, 11 constellations and 25 civilian and commercial satellites have been dispatched to implement emergency coordinated observations for 17 major natural disasters in 12 African countries. The data volume exceeds 500GB, forming a "disaster emergency resource pool" with the most extensive sources, the largest quantity, the largest scale, and the most complete elements of remote sensing data in China.
Wu Yirong said that China has built a "space-sky-earth" three-dimensional observation and sensing technology system to provide support for localized applications in Africa. China's Beidou high-precision positioning has formed cooperative practices in joint scientific research, station network construction and local operations in many African countries, continuing to empower agriculture, transportation, surveying and mapping and other fields.
"China-Africa aerospace science and technology cooperation has entered a new stage of China-Africa joint scientific research, platform co-construction, and sustainable development." Wu Yirong said that in the future, we must adhere to demand-driven and deepen joint scientific and technological innovation; adhere to openness and sharing, strengthen talent training and capacity building; adhere to the application orientation, focus on key areas such as precision agriculture, resource and environment monitoring, and disaster prevention and control, carry out technology verification and application demonstration, so that scientific and technological innovation results can better serve economic and social development and benefit local people.

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