It is often considered by various sources and institutions around the world that promo-tion of space physics activities in a developing country like Ethiopia is a waste of timeand resources. It has, of course, some sense: developing countries should put all theirefforts in improving the standard of life, infrastructure and basic education. However,it is straightforward to realize that nowadays improvement in any of the basic needs ofdeveloping countries is related to high technology (e.g. mobile phones, GPS, remotesensing). This means that a developing country has to take care of recruiting special-ists among their own people who can take part in the decision making processes whichare increasingly of global nature. Moreover, many citizens of developing countries arestudying and working abroad attaining high expertise. As a matter of fact, there aremore Ethiopians with PhD in physics working abroad than in the country. These peo-ple are lost for the benefit of their own country if there is no need for their professionin their home country. There is no doubt that the main task of improving the standardof living cannot be achieved without development and social transformation of thesociety, which can take place efficiently in a self-adopting and dynamic process.In line with the above argument, we have initiated the establishment of the WasheraSpace Physics Laboratory (WASPL) at Addis Ababa University in Ethiopia. It is acollaboration project between Oulu University and Addis Ababa University. The lab-oratory is expected to start operation of a pulsation magnetometer and photometer inSeptember 2004. Other types of standard geophysical instruments are to be installedin subsequent missions. The project is of mutual interest of both parties. The equa-torial ionosphere is still a poorly investigated region of our near Earth’s space. In afirst pilot investigation the existence and properties of the ionospheric Alfvén res-onator (IAR) in the equatorial ionosphere is addressed. WASPL is expected to joinworldwide activities in monitoring local and global atmosphereic and ionospheric pa-rameters. There is also a plan to install a neutron monitor to measure galactic and solarcosmic rays. WASPL will be situated at the magnetic equator and at 2500m above seallevel, which make it a unique place to carry out space physics experiments. In this pa-per, we describe WASPL in some more details. Interested scientists may participatewith us and/or start similar initiatives.
T.Bösinger (1),
B. Damtie (2) and I.G. Usoskin (3)
(1) Dept. of Physical Sciences, FIN-90014 University of Oulu, Finland,
(2) Dept. of Physics,POB 1176, Addis Ababa University, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia,
(3) Sodankylä GeophysicalObservatory, FIN-90014 University of Oulu, Finland