Swedish software-defined satellite solutions group Remos Space Systems has secured €1 million ($1m) in seed funding led by Swedish investment firms Bling Capital and Partnerinvest Norr to fuel its global expansion with a strategic emphasis on the African market.
“By the end of the decade, we expect to have more than 30,000 satellites in orbit,” Petter Lindberg, co-founder and COO at Remos Space Systems told DCD. “The ground stations [needed to run them] are often based [all over the world]. There will be an increased business of hosting and building ground stations and gateways in Africa for foreign-owned satellites. Here, Remos products could also increase cost-efficiency.”
Launched in 2021, the company serves satellite ground stations, emphasizing phasing out costly hardware with more flexible, software-defined baseband solutions intended to save on costs.
It sells modems and transponders, virtualized ground transceivers, basebands, and software.
The prioritization of the African continent seeks to mutually benefit from the expansion of the continent’s socioeconomic base, building connectivity, and data accessibility.
The direction is led by the company’s co-founder and CEO, Dr. Moses Browne Mwakyanjala, a Tanzanian-born engineer with expertise in the region’s challenges and opportunities.
“Remos represents the kind of visionary entrepreneurship we stand behind—technical excellence, mission-driven leadership, and global potential,” said Deqa Abukar, CEO at BLING Capital. “Their technology is not only critical to the evolving space economy, it also lowers barriers to entry and opens new opportunities for underserved markets in the satellite sector.”
Sabina Zahiraldinni, investment manager at Partnerinvest Norr, added: "We are incredibly proud to be part of this transformative journey and contribute to Remo's work to revolutionize the satellite industry. The company's technology not only enables flexible and advanced satellite communication solutions but also plays a crucial role in democratizing the space industry."
Connecting Africa
Mwakyanjala believes Remos suits the needs of African procurers well.
“African nations want to build satellites but lack experience and do not have a super high budget,” he told DCD. “Remos solutions help democratize space by making it easier to access space.”
Barriers to growth and productivity in Africa, like power reliability, ground infrastructure gaps, regulatory issues, and uncompetitive markets, are holding back enormous potential in one of the world’s most populous continents. This is something Remos believes it can help with.
“With constellations such as Starlink, Kuiper, and AST SpaceMobile, we can connect the unconnected, both for civilian purposes like non-terrestrial 5G connectivity as well as military and government use cases,” Lindberg said. “This will help increase growth in the region and reduce inequality within and among countries. Foreign aid agencies in Western countries could help subsidize the cost of this infrastructure.”
Given the deep pockets of China’s Belt and Road initiative to contribute to infrastructure in Africa, many in the West have highlighted the dangers of African nations being courted by BRICS nations, a fear that has grown critical with the unprecedented lapse in levels of Western foreign aid programs, thought to cripple the communities that have come to rely on them.
