Africa has always been behind in space exploration. Lacking funding, vision, or necessity, continental leaders have generally never made space exploration a priority. And it’s not for the lack of big hearts in the chest of the world’s largest space agencies, especially Cheick Modibo Diarra. The world-renowned Malian astrophysicist who directed for NASA the flights of the Magellan probes to Venus, Ulysses to the sun, Galileo to Jupiter, as well as Observer and Pathfinder to Mars.
African nations now want to go further in their conquest of space. And these new ambitions are reflected in Tuesday’s signing of the Art Accords by Nigeria and Rwanda
Until then, African nations’ extraterrestrial ambitions were limited to the placement of satellites orbiting the Earth for very specific purposes, such as Earth observation, telecommunications, territorial security, meteorology, and natural resource management. was limited to espionage activity. This means that over 40 African satellites of various sizes (large, medium, microsatellites, nanosatellites, etc.) are in operation. Major countries are South Africa (9 satellites), Egypt (9), Nigeria (6), Algeria (6) and Morocco (3).
But things are changing. African nations now want to go further in their conquest of space. And these new ambitions are reflected, among other things, in the Art Agreement signed between Nigeria and Rwanda on Tuesday, September 13th.
These two nations have developed a set of principles designed to guide the next phase of space exploration, reaffirm key commitments of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, and enable critical operational implementation.