Posted on: September 08, 2015

The European Investment Bank (EIB) has issued a prior notice for a study concerning the extension of EGNOS to ASECNA States.  You can find it at :

http://ted.europa.eu/udl?uri=TED:NOTICE:159363-2015:TEXT:EN:HTML&tabId=1

Posted on: June 23, 2015

The objective of MAGNIFIC is the promotion of an African EGNOS and of the Galileo Early services with EGNSS awareness.

The market sectors of MAGNIFIC covers strategic domains including the export of EGNOS for Africa and key priority applications identified in the GSA Action plan on GNSS applications: road, aviation, maritime, precision agriculture/environment protection, civil protection and surveillance, and LBS.

In particular, MAGNIFIC proposes to demonstrate to African Stakeholders the benefits of EGNOS and Galileo by means of 6 field trials in Africa and a EGNSS international conference:

1.     Airport surface vehicle using EGNOS integrity and interference monitoring (Dakar, Maputo)
2.     Oil exploitation with innovative EGNSS algorithms to mitigate scintillation (Angola)
3.     Highly secured multi-modal transport using EGNSS tracking and Galileo SAR (Cameroun, Tchad)
4.     Flight using SBAS procedures with real EGNOS corrections for Africa (Dakar, Lome)
5.     Natural resources analysis with accurate vertical positioning (EGNSS PPP in Togo)
6.     Secured Maritime transport using new generation wide spectrum GALILEO SAR signal (Gabon).

For more information: http://www.magnific-gsa-project.eu/

Posted on: May 13, 2015

SAFIR (Satellite navigation services for AFrIcan Region) is a three years project started in January 2013 and is funded by the EU and ACP. It covers the set-up, staffing and operations of an EGNOS-Africa Joint Programme Office (JPO) with a proper regional participation of the various beneficiary countries. SAFIR is also setting up and supporting a number of technical Working Sessions composed of regional stakeholders concerned with GNSS/EGNOS2 in sub-Saharan Africa, which address all aspects of EGNOS-Africa system development and service provision in preparation of the infrastructure.
The eighth and last SAFIR working session has been held in Antnanarivo (Madagascar) from the 13th to the 17th of May 2015. This session placed under the auspices of the Aviation Civile de Madagascar (ACM) has been opened by Mr James Andrianalisoa, Director General of ACM, and gathered around 30 participants. It successfully concluded the SAFIR cycle on the implementation of GNSS/EGNOS services in Africa.

This 8th session addressed the following items:

• A shared understanding of EGNOS Version 3 programme and system,
• The modular implementation of EGNOS/SBAS services in Africa,
• The presentation of a consolidated draft of the roadmap for the implementation of EGNOS/SBAS services in Africa.

The session also provided the opportunity to the participants to share their feedback on SAFIR and its sister project TREGA (TRaining on EGNOS-GNSS in Africa) also funded by the EU and ACP.
The roadmap for EGNOS/SBAS services implementation in Africa has been prepared by the SAFIR Project Implementation Team and the EGNOS-Africa Joint Programme Office (JPO). This document sets a strategy based on a regional modular approach and declined into objectives and milestones towards the full coverage of Africa by EGNOS/SBAS. It will be presented to the Programme Steering Committee (PSC) in the forthcoming months.

Posted on: March 16, 2015

The launch of the construction of the headquarters of the JPO (Joint Program Office) EGNOS-Africa Office, has been formalised through a ceremony of laying the first stone. It was attended by Matthias Petschke, Director of satellite navigation programs of the European Union, and Amadou Ousmane Guitteye, Director General of ASECNA and various organisations officials from Aviation community or Government Authorities. The building will also host the headquarters of flight procedures for Africa (AFI FPP) Office.
The future building will come out of the ground in a few months and will be located near the International Airport Léopold Sédar Senghor, close to the ICAO and AFCAC (African Civil Aviation Commission) Offices.

The Joint Office of EGNOS-Africa Program, commonly called JPO (Joint Program Office) EGNOS-Africa is the result of the implementation of the Africa-EU Joint Strategy which calls for the provision of satellite navigation services in the Infrastructure Development.

Just before the laying of the foundation stone, the JPO EGNOS-Africa was officially installed in the temporary premises, granted by ASECNA as part of their contractual obligations in SAFIR. During the ceremony of installation, Amadou Ousmane Guitteye, Director General of ASECNA recalled that: “the main mission of the JPO is to ensure that Africa can have adequate skills and is able to coordinate the implementation of the development and the deployment of GNSS / EGNOS services and applications on the Continent.”
The establishment of the Office of the EGNOS-Africa Joint Programme is an important step towards strengthening cooperation between Africa and the European Union in the field of satellite navigation. This office is a concrete expression of the commitment made by the Heads of State and Government of Africa and the EU at the 4th EU-Africa Summit held in April 2014 in Brussels, to assign sustainable and sufficient resources for the satellite navigation infrastructure deployment based on EGNOS.

For more information, please watch TV5 Monde reportage (in French) on ASECNA and EU-Africa cooperation on EGNOS services.

Posted on: October 09, 2014

The SAFIR2 (Satellite navigation services for AFrIcan Region) project is pleased to announce the completion of the recruitment of the EGNOS-Africa Joint Programme Office (JPO) staff. Ten Experts (1 Director – 1 Deputy Director – 1 GNSS Programme Manager – 1 Certification and Safety Expert – 1 Legal and Economic Expert – 2 GNSS Experts – 1 Aviation Application Expert – 1 Sister Application Expert – 1 Operation Expert) are now on duty in Dakar.
Before joining the JPO, all the JPO staffs were trained in Trieste (Italy) under the sister Project TREGA (TRaining for EGnos in Africa) led by UNESCO/ICTP (International Centre for Theoretical Physics). The JPO is housed in an independent building in the Almadies area of Dakar, together with the ICAO Flight Procedures Programme for Africa-Indian Ocean region. The premises are made available by ASECNA as part of its kind contribution to both Projects.

The missions of the EGNOS-Africa Joint Programme Office (JPO) are: to define the baseline and to oversee the subsequent implementation phases for the specification and procurement of the development and deployment of GNSS/EGNOS in Africa.

The SAFIR Project and the JPO are supporting a number of technical Working Sessions, composed of regional stakeholders concerned with GNSS/EGNOS in sub-Saharan Africa, which address all aspects of EGNOS-Africa system implementation in preparation of the infrastructure deployment phase, including governance, certification policy, liability policy, legal aspects, services provision, applications, as well as system performance and maintenance. The outputs of these Working Sessions are feeding into the GNSS/EGNOS Services Implementation Roadmap for sub-Saharan Africa, currently under development by the SAFIR Project Implementation Team and the JPO staffs.

The EGNOS-Africa Joint Programme Office (JPO) is a pan-African entity that acts for the benefit of Africa and supports Stakeholders in their GNSS/EGNOS strategy, developments and implementation.
For further information, please contact: Ladislaus Matindi Olivier TURCAS JPO Director SAFIR Team Leader Ladislaus.Matindi@egnos-africa.com oturcas@orange.fr Mob: +221 78 166 06 64 Mob: +221 77 528 69 63