Uploaded April 2025 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
In this free talk Samuel Oyewole discusses Air and Space Strategies in African Disaster Management. This talk is part of the RAF Museum's Research Lecture Programme.
If you'd like to support the RAF Museum, you can make a donation at: support.rafmuseum.org/Donate-Now
Talk Outline
The strategic utilities of air platforms and space assets have become noticeable in contemporary disaster management strategies. Air and space strategies have been developed and employed in early warning and disaster mitigation in many technologically advanced countries of Europe, North America and Far East Asia.
Nevertheless, there is shortage of academic attention for the interests, capacities and applications of air and space strategies by African and other developing countries.
Although African capacities remain underdeveloped and disarticulated, their interests, capabilities and applications of air and space strategies have increased in the last three decades.
Most African countries have developed military, paramilitary and civil aviation capabilities that (feature platforms such as drones, aircraft and helicopters) have been used for various purposes since independence.
A growing number of African countries have equally developed space strategies and capacities, which have produced no fewer than 44 satellites operated in the region.
These and other related assets have been used to support early warning, real time situation awareness, mass evacuation, search and rescue, delivery and insertion of relief materials and personnel among others in theatres of natural and man-made disasters and other emergencies.
These strategies have been utilised to various degrees in local and international responses to natural disaster such as floods, landslides and storms, man-made environmental disaster such as oil spill and fire outbreak, and in medical emergency such as accidents and outbreak of diseases.
Against this background, this talk seeks to examine the development of air and space strategies in Africa as well as their operationalization, prospects, challenges and possible ways forward.
About Samuel Oyewole
Samuel Oyewole is a lecturer at the Department of Political Science, Federal University Oye-Ekiti, Nigeria. His research has focused primarily on emerging security challenges and opportunities in Africa, and particularly how affected states can annex available potentials and utilise relevant capabilities (especially technologies and instruments of coercion) with appropriate policy measures to manage various strategic crises.
His articles have appeared in many journals, including Astropolitics, Australian Journal of Maritime and Ocean Affairs, African Security, African Security Review, African Conflict and Peacebuilding Review, Defense and Security Analysis, Defence Studies, Geojournal, Journal of Asian and African Studies, New Zealand International Review, Politikon, Politeia, South African Journal of International Affairs, Strategic Analysis, and Studies in Conflict & Terrorism.
He is the co-editor of Power Politics in Africa: Nigeria and South Africa in Comparative Perspective (Cambridge Scholar Publishing, 2020) with Olusola Ogunnubi, and Boko Haram’s Campaign of Terror in Nigeria: Context, dimensions and future trajectories (Routledge, 2021) with Temitope B. Oriola and Freedom C. Onuoha.
His latest book, Political Economy of Kidnapping in Nigeria (Springer) is co-edited with J. Shola Omotola.
This lecture was first broadcast in 2022.
In this free talk Samuel Oyewole discusses Air and Space Strategies in African Disaster Management. This talk is part of the RAF Museum's Research Lecture Programme.
If you'd like to support the RAF Museum, you can make a donation at: support.rafmuseum.org/Donate-Now
Talk Outline
The strategic utilities of air platforms and space assets have become noticeable in contemporary disaster management strategies. Air and space strategies have been developed and employed in early warning and disaster mitigation in many technologically advanced countries of Europe, North America and Far East Asia.
Nevertheless, there is shortage of academic attention for the interests, capacities and applications of air and space strategies by African and other developing countries.
Although African capacities remain underdeveloped and disarticulated, their interests, capabilities and applications of air and space strategies have increased in the last three decades.
Most African countries have developed military, paramilitary and civil aviation capabilities that (feature platforms such as drones, aircraft and helicopters) have been used for various purposes since independence.
A growing number of African countries have equally developed space strategies and capacities, which have produced no fewer than 44 satellites operated in the region.
These and other related assets have been used to support early warning, real time situation awareness, mass evacuation, search and rescue, delivery and insertion of relief materials and personnel among others in theatres of natural and man-made disasters and other emergencies.
These strategies have been utilised to various degrees in local and international responses to natural disaster such as floods, landslides and storms, man-made environmental disaster such as oil spill and fire outbreak, and in medical emergency such as accidents and outbreak of diseases.
Against this background, this talk seeks to examine the development of air and space strategies in Africa as well as their operationalization, prospects, challenges and possible ways forward.
About Samuel Oyewole
Samuel Oyewole is a lecturer at the Department of Political Science, Federal University Oye-Ekiti, Nigeria. His research has focused primarily on emerging security challenges and opportunities in Africa, and particularly how affected states can annex available potentials and utilise relevant capabilities (especially technologies and instruments of coercion) with appropriate policy measures to manage various strategic crises.
His articles have appeared in many journals, including Astropolitics, Australian Journal of Maritime and Ocean Affairs, African Security, African Security Review, African Conflict and Peacebuilding Review, Defense and Security Analysis, Defence Studies, Geojournal, Journal of Asian and African Studies, New Zealand International Review, Politikon, Politeia, South African Journal of International Affairs, Strategic Analysis, and Studies in Conflict & Terrorism.
He is the co-editor of Power Politics in Africa: Nigeria and South Africa in Comparative Perspective (Cambridge Scholar Publishing, 2020) with Olusola Ogunnubi, and Boko Haram’s Campaign of Terror in Nigeria: Context, dimensions and future trajectories (Routledge, 2021) with Temitope B. Oriola and Freedom C. Onuoha.
His latest book, Political Economy of Kidnapping in Nigeria (Springer) is co-edited with J. Shola Omotola.
This lecture was first broadcast in 2022.
