The launch, originally scheduled for Monday night in the United States, had been postponed several times this week due to bad weather conditions.
On Saturday, a SpaceX Falcon-9 rocket lifted off at 06:48 GMT from the US base in Vandenberg (California), before deploying an hour later several dozen satellites, including the Kenyan Taifa-1 ("Nation-1", in Swahili language).
Designed and developed by a team of Kenyan researchers, this satellite is expected to provide data in the fields of agriculture and environmental monitoring in Kenya, valuable for the future of this East African country which is currently experiencing a historic drought.
In a joint statement, the Kenyan Ministry of Defence and the Kenyan Space Agency (KSA) last week touted "an important step" that should give impetus to "Kenya's nascent space economy".
"We benefit directly from space exploration, we will be able to improve our food security," Pattern Odhiambo, an engineer at KSA, who participated in the project, told AFP.
With the images from the satellite's multispectral camera, "we will be able to have high-quality earth observation data, it will help us predict crop yields," he said.
Kenya sent its first nano-satellite into space in 2018.
As of 2022, more than 50 African satellites have been sent into space, according to Space in Africa, a Nigerian company that tracks African space programs.
Egypt was the first country on the continent to send a satellite into space in 1998.
© 2023 AFP