As one of the few South African private entities in GEO, RIIS's formal endorsement at the 61st GEO Executive Committee, announced during the GEO Week and Ministerial Summit in Cape Town last month, cements its role in this expansive network. Within GEO, which currently counts 31 African government members, RIIS is poised to play a pivotal role in enhancing the continent's capacity in earth observation technologies.

GEO's global network, integrating governments, academia, research institutions, and increasingly the private sector, focuses on improving and coordinating global EO systems. This collaboration is pivotal for promoting open data sharing, identifying gaps in current solutions, and reducing duplication of efforts. The ability to observe earth phenomena and activities from space presents immense opportunities for countries worldwide, offering solutions to mitigate social and environmental risks and addressing longstanding challenges.

Imraan Saloojee, an executive at RIIS, shared his insights during a plenary session at this year's GEO Week. He emphasized the importance of GEO's receptiveness to the private sector's perspectives and its considerations for deeper engagement with this sector. "Our rich experience in space advisory work, including space innovation ecosystem development for African governments, will benefit from direct participation in cutting-edge discussions on earth observation," Saloojee stated. He expressed enthusiasm for RIIS's new role in GEO, anticipating it would deepen the firm's engagements with the global earth observation community across political, scientific, and end-user groupings.

The recent GEO Week also saw the adoption of the 2023 Cape Town Ministerial Declaration. This declaration endorses the GEO Post-2025 Strategy, titled 'Earth Intelligence for All,' continuing GEO's leadership in enabling and coordinating the use of EO across various scales, sectors, and geographies. The Declaration commits GEO to develop an implementation plan for this Strategy, highlighting the critical role of young people in sustainable development efforts.

The United Nations, recognizing the benefits of EO data, declared it a critical enabler for achieving its sustainable development goals. The 2015 resolution "A/RES/70/1: Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development" includes a specific declaration to promote the use of earth observation and geospatial information in public-private cooperation.

The global space economy, as reported by Bloomberg, has been on an upward trajectory, growing by 8% to $546 billion in 2022. Over the next five years, the sector is expected to see a further 41% growth, with the commercial space sector playing a significant role. In the last year alone, the commercial space sector generated revenues of $427.6 billion, with position, navigation, and timing (PNT) satellite data accounting for a substantial portion of this revenue.

Saloojee's closing remarks encapsulated the potential of this new partnership: "To tease out the broad opportunities for space-based solutions, including but not limited to EO data, requires connections, collaborations, cooperation, and funding. GEO is a strong conduit to all of these. At RIIS, we believe that the time is ripe to leverage what we have, to build our knowledge and grasp innovative solutions that can solve - through space - what for years have been immense development challenges in Africa." This sentiment reflects the growing momentum in the space sector and the vital role of partnerships like GEO in fostering innovation and sustainable development.

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