Background Information :

The second United Nations Conference on the Exploration and Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (UNISPACE '82) held in Vienna, Austria, recommended that the United Nations Programme on Space Applications (PSA) should focus its attention, inter alia, on the development of indigenous capabilities in space science and technology at the local level.

The United Nations General assembly (GA) endorsed that recommendation in its resolution 37/90 of 10th December 1982. the GA in its resolution 45/72 of 11th December, 1990 also endorsed the recommendation of its Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COUPOS) that the United Nations should lead, with the active support of its specialized agencies and other international organizations, an international effort to establish regional Centres for space science and technology education in existing national/regional educational institutions in the developing countries (A/AC. 105/456, annex II, para 4).

This endorsement of the GA was in recognition that an essential pre-requisite to successful space technology application was the building of indigenous capabilities, particularly human resources, within each region. In particular, the endorsement recognized that if effective administrative and appropriate applications of space technology were to succeed in the developing countries, efforts must be devoted at the local level to the development of necessary high level knowledge and expertise in space technology related fields.

In various United Nations documents, A/AC 105/498 of 1992 and A/AC 105/534 of 1993, the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA) outlined a number of steps to translate the GA resolutions mentioned above into operational programmes. One of these steps was the organization of an evaluation mission to each of the Countries, in each region, that offered to host the Centre.

In Africa, Ghana, Kenya, Morocco, Nigeria, Senegal and Zimbabwe offered to host the centre. In a statement issued on the 15th of September 1995, by the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA), Nigeria was chosen to host for the benefit of Anglo-phone Countries, the African Regional Centre for Space Science and Technology Education (ARCSSTE-E), (ref. UN DOC A/AC 105/434). A similar Centre for the benefit of Francophone countries in Africa has been established in Morocco.

The host institution in Nigeria for the ARCSSTE-E is the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife. ARCSSTE-E is expected to cater for the educational needs of Anglophone Countries while the Centre in Morocco will basically do the same for Francophone countries.

ARCSSTE-E operates under the auspices of the National Space Research and Development Agency (NASRDA), Abuja, which is also an agency of the Federal Ministry of Science and Technology, Nigeria.