Future 50: Dragonfly Aerospace - South African innovation reaching for space

South Africa's future isn't only found beneath our soil. Some of it is being designed in Stellenbosch and sent into space.

Dragonfly Aerospace, founded by Bryan Dean and his colleagues in 2020, designs and builds sophisticated Earth-observation cameras and the satellites that carry them.

It is an extraordinary South African business story, one built on decades of hard-won experience.

South Africa developed valuable satellite engineering expertise around Stellenbosch University, but as projects ended and companies closed, that knowledge risked being lost to other industries.

Bryan and his team saw an opportunity to keep the capability together and turn it into a sustainable product business.