North of Malindi, where the Indian Ocean meets the equator and Italian space history has already left a tangible mark, Italy and Kenya are once again looking upwards. Both countries, for different but converging reasons, are considering the possibility of relaunching rocket and satellite launches from Kenya's northern coast.

The Italian Space Agency has completed a study to rethink the operational role of the Luigi Broglio Malindi Space Centre, the historic Italian equatorial base located on the Ngomeni peninsula. Created as part of the San Marco Project and used between 1967 and 1988 to launch scientific satellites using American Scout launch vehicles, the centre has continued to perform support functions over the years, particularly in receiving telemetry and collecting Earth observation data. Today, as confirmed by ASI President Teodoro Valente during an internal meeting at the Agency in 2025, that study opens up the possibility of going beyond simple technical support and evaluating a return, albeit in new forms, to launch activities.

A significant factor is the presence, still off the coast of Malindi, of the two ocean platforms San Marco and Santa Rita, infrastructures that represent a unique technological and symbolic heritage in the European space landscape. The ASI dossier is now under evaluation, probably within the Interministerial Committee for Space and Aerospace Research Policies, while on the political front, the possibility of relaunching the Malindi base has already been included in the Mattei Plan, as mentioned in December 2023 by the Minister of Enterprise and Made in Italy, Adolfo Urso, with reference to possible launches of constellations of small satellites to serve African countries.

At the same time, Kenya is also taking concrete steps in the same direction. The Nairobi government, through the National Treasury and the Kenya Space Agency, has launched an international procedure to select specialised consultants to develop a national commercial spaceport. The project, conceived as a public-private partnership, involves the construction of a new equatorial launch base in Tipini, near the Tana River estuary, north of Malindi, along the Indian Ocean coast.

The consultants' mandate includes a comprehensive feasibility study: preliminary design, evaluation of possible launch vehicles, infrastructure requirements, economic estimates and a phased development plan for the spaceport. It also includes an analysis of market demand, the involvement of potential investors and industry operators, and the definition of the most sustainable partnership model.

A clear picture emerges: the area north of Malindi is once again considered strategic for access to space. On the one hand, Italy is evaluating how to reactivate a scientific and industrial legacy built in Africa over half a century ago; on the other, Kenya aspires to equip itself with its own launch infrastructure and position itself as a regional space hub. Two distinct paths, but geographically and politically close, which could intersect in a new season of space cooperation between Europe and Africa, at the exact point where the equator makes space a little closer.