HOUSTON -- Aerospace engineers in South Africa and Nigeria are battling for government support for continued investment in satellite technology that will prove satellites' utility for even the poorest of nations.

South Africa's Stellenbosch Satellite Engineering Group, which already managed the successful Sunsat Earth observation satellite, launched in partnership with NASA in 1999, are fighting an uphill battle for a follow-on program despite Sunsat's success.

"We have to take things step-by-step. Our challenge is to package a satellite program in a country in which people are going without food, without water," said Sias Mostert of Stellenbosch. "We can prove the technical capability of the satellite, but we are asked: What is its socioeconomic capability?"

Mostert said Stellenbosch is answering that question by pointing out that a home-grown space program keeps South African engineers from emigrating to other nations. It also helps the nation manage its own natural resources and reduces the need to purchase satellite data elsewhere.

The Sunsat spacecraft, a remote sensing satellite financed in cooperation with NASA, provided 15-meter ground resolution from a platform weighing just 64 kilograms. That means objects at least 15 meters across can be identified in the images. More than 100 engineers participated in the project.

Nigeria is facing similar challenges as it takes part in a five-nation Disaster Monitoring Constellation organized by Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd. of Guildford, England. Small-satellite specialist Surrey has trained engineers from many nations and helped them enter the space age with small satellites for Earth observation, telecommunications and research.

NigeriaSat and the four other Surrey-coordinated disaster-monitoring satellites are scheduled to be launched aboard three Russian Cosmos rockets between November and mid-2004. Algeria, Turkey, Thailand and Britain are also launching satellites for the constellation. China and Vietnam are expected to join with other satellites.

Nigeria's space agency, the National Space Research and Development Administration (NASRDA), has also signed an initial contract with Surrey for a telecommunications satellite.

But NASRDA Director-General Robert A. Borroffice said the communications satellite remains politically sensitive. "People are constantly asking: Why should developing countries, especially one with so much debt, go into space development at all?"

Borroffice said one reason for Nigeria to develop its own space technology base is to reduce the amount of hard-currency payments it makes for Earth observation and telecommunications services provided from foreign sources.

"We pay a huge amount of foreign exchange for satellite data on border adjustments, population studies and so forth," Borroffice said.

NASRDA was established in 1999 and is managed by a governing panel presided over by Nigeria's president and including the ministers of defense, research, information and environment.