ESSP¹ (European Satellite Services Provider) and ASECNA² (the Agency for Air Navigation Safety in Africa and Madagascar) have signed a cooperation agreement during the Paris Air Show.

ESSP is the service provider for EGNOS, the European Satellite Based Augmentation System (SBAS), a system owned by the European Union and managed by the European GNSS Agency. ESSP has acquired more than 10 years of experience in the operations, maintenance, safety, security, performance monitoring and service provision of the European EGNOS SBAS system.

ASECNA and the European Union have already signed a cooperation agreement, entered in force in November 2018, regarding the development of satellite navigation and the provision of associated services in ASECNA’s area of competence for the benefit of civil aviation. ASECNA is indeed committed to the provision from 2021/22 of satellite-based augmentation services in Africa. In this frame, ASECNA pursues its preparation to the upcoming operations and maintenance of its SBAS and related services provision.

The objective of the cooperation agreement is for ESSP to support ASECNA in this preparation phase and to develop synergies in view of the future operations and provision of SBAS services in Africa.

The signature took place between Mohamed Moussa (ASECNA Director General) and Thierry Racaud (ESSP CEO) in the frame of the Paris Air Show on the DGAC stand (French Directorate for Civil Aviation), in the presence of DSNA Director Maurice Georges and ASECNA’s representatives.

1. ESSP is a simplified joint stock company based in Toulouse and Madrid. As the EGNOS Service Provider for the European GNSS Agency, ESSP is a certified Air Navigation Service Provider (ANSP).

2. ASECNA is the Agency for Air Navigation Safety in Africa and Madagascar, an international public organisation, having 18 Member States (Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroun, Centrafrique, Congo, Côte d’Ivoire, France, Gabon, Guinée Bissau, Guinée Equatoriale, Madagascar, Mali, Mauritanie, Niger, Sénégal, Tchad, Togo, Union des Comores), whose registered office is in Dakar, Senegal.  ASECNA is vested with the responsibility of cooperative management of an airspace of 16,1 million km2 (that is 1,5 times the size of Europe).