Mr Maram Kaire is a Systems Engineer and Astronomer. A Commander of the National Order of the Lion, Maram Kaire became the 1st Senegalese to have his name attributed to an object of the solar system with the designation of the asteroid (35462) Maramkaire by the International Astronomical Union in May 2021. Mr Maram Kaire is the Co-founder and current President of the Senegalese Association for the Promotion of Astronomy, Managing Director of AFRICASPACE, a company specialising in strategic support for African states in the development and implementation of their space policy, and was recently appointed the Director General of the Senegalese Agency for Space Studies.
Between 2018 and 2021, Maram Kaire coordinated three important NASA missions in Senegal to observe stellar occultations by the asteroids ARROKOTH, POLYMELE and ORUS. In March 2020, he was also appointed the National Astronomy Education Coordinator for Senegal by the International Astronomical Union (IAU), the organisation that coordinates the work of astronomers and astrophysicists worldwide with the mission to help develop astronomy in the Senegalese education system.
Mr Kaire was the initiator of many astronomy development projects, such as the SPACEBUS project, a founding member of the African Astronomical Society, and a member of the Executive Committee of the Africa Initiative for Planetary and Space Sciences. Between 2015 and 2019, he was a Technical Advisor to the Minister of Higher Education, Research and Innovation, in charge of the Promotion and Popularization of Scientific Culture. He led partnership projects with Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales de France and ARIANEGROUP for the development of the first Senegalese satellite, university courses in space sciences and the installation of a centre for the assembly, integration and testing of microsatellites in Senegal.
He was awarded by the famous magazine CIEL & ESPACE and Radio RFI as the driving force behind the development of astronomy and space sciences in Senegal, and in 2021, he was ranked among the Top 500 most influential Africans in the World.