collection 2020
The Return of the Afronaut
Afrofuturism and the Upsurge in African Space-Endeavours
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By George Sichinga and Natalie Beck
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“Gikosh” by the Kenyan Afrofuturist artist Osborne Macharia
On a hot and dry December afternoon in 1964, Edward Mukuka Nkoloso jumped up and down on the dried-out lawn of an abandoned farm, some ten kilometres outside Lusaka, the capital of the newly independent Zambia. Opposite the man wearing shirt and tie, a velvet cape and an army helmet, a handful of young men and women have lined up and are following his lead. Behind them, a cloth banner loosely held up by two wooden flocks in the ground read “Zambian Space Academy”.
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“Mr Nkoloso is this the site for your rocket launching programme and could you tell me where your rocket is?”, a journalist for the Associated Press (AP) asked with a mocking undertone to his voice.
“Yes”, Nkoloso responded confidently, “This is the rocket launching site and my rocket is just here”. The camera pans onto a cuboid scrap metal-construction, barely larger than a fridge.
The young cadets jumping and clapping their hands overhead in unison were part of Nkoloso’s team of potential astronauts, or ‘afronauts’ as he referred to them.
The described scenes and recounted dialogues are based on the original AP news report from 1964, that can still be watched on youtube.
At the height of the Cold War space race, Nkoloso was determined to join the competition between the USA and the USSR. Asked about his expectations concerning the two superpowers’ reactions to his bid Nkoloso responded: “Oh, they will be only surprised because they will find that they underestimate our resources, plus the intelligence; but I am sure we are catching them”.
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It is safe to say that the AP journalist who went to report about the academy and its eccentric visionary on that day in 1964 was not the only one who thought of him and his companions as “a bunch of crackpots”. Several requests for funding from the likes of the United Nations and UNESCO remained rejected, the Zambian Space programme ended up never leaving the ground and Nkoloso’s dream would go on to be logged into forgotten history.
Barely half a century onward the African continent is recording an influx of countries successfully launching satellites into space and even Nkoloso’s dream of seeing an Afronaut go beyond the realms of gravity seems more tangible than ever before.
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The first Sub-saharan African satellite was launched by South Africa in 1999. In 2003 Nigeria followed suit with its first satellite in 2003. For the next near to 15 years, the continent’s two economic powerhouses remained the only sub-Saharan African states to play in the league of space-exploring countries. The past three years, however, have seen the number of contenders in the race to space quadruple. In 2017 it was Angola and Ghana that launched their first satellites, in 2018 Kenya and in 2019 a Rwanda, a Sudan and an Ethiopia satellite joined their foregoers in the Earth’s orbit.
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The factors commonly brought forward as having led to this development are streamlined to a single narrative: The introduction of nano-satellites has drastically cut the costs of both development and launching, making the technology more accessible to governments handling lower budgets. The Ghanaian GhanaSat-1 that was developed by students of the All Nations University in a two-year project, that according to the College President cost as little as $500,000. At the same time, research cooperations with foreign space agencies and infrastructure development loans have provided the necessary financial and technical support. Out of the six newcomer satellites launched in the past three years, three were developed in conjunction with the Japanese Space Agency, two were designed and manufactured by China and the Angolan satellite was born out of Russian support. Currently, only South Africa has the technology to manufacture its own nanosatellites, something other African countries are still looking to develop. The prospect of this sort of capacity development within African technological and educational institutions has often been stated as a central motive in the bid for space involvement. Most prominently, however, commentators have been quoting a plethora of pragmatic developmental benefits: disaster management efficiency, improvement of telecommunications networks, coastline and border control, tracking down of terrorist groups, wildlife and livestock monitoring, climate change observations, prediction of weather patterns for sustainable agricultural solutions.
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Satellites launched by African Countries (as of July 2019). Source: Space in Africa
For one this predominant narrative fortifies the typical preconceptions of African decision making that limit it to being driven by either foreign stimulation or by the constraints of the continent’s poverty. But more crucially all these factors do little to truly explain the underlying reasons for this sudden upsurge in African interest in space-endeavours, nor do they unfold the currentness of the ongoing development. Going beyond the frontiers of the terrestrial, with all its mythical connotations has never been an issue of pragmatic reasoning. It all might have more to do with imagination, superheroes and science-fiction than it does with anything that is actually tangible… at least for now.
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The symbolic power of space exploration
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Right from the earliest days of satellite technology with the Soviet launch of Sputnik in 1957, it was understood, that the quest to expand man’s frontiers extraterrestrially was fired by rivalry and the aim to prove one’s potential capabilities.
The Cold War Space race between the USA and the USSR Space was a proxy conflict that meant a lot more than the mere technology behind it; it was to determine the most technologically advanced. What alarmed the US about the Sputnik moment was not merely the fact that their rival thereby disposed of an application they didn’t but the implicit message this conveyed to the world: the Soviet Union had gained an upper hand in determining the future by demonstrating that they were capable of what Kennedy in his iconic rice stadium speech of 1962 called “doing the other things”, the things of the future that are yet to be defined. But that was the Cold War, a period in time when international intelligence reached unprecedented significance in gaging the odds of an escalation and the threat of nuclear proliferation lent increased importance to high-tech domination.
Markedly, going back in history can however also explain why post-colonial African states are giving a heightened level of symbolic significance to space-related capabilities. Throughout colonial rule, the technological superiority of the colonialists was used not only as a means to enable but also of legitimizing foreign decree and claims of superiority. Those forced into subordination came to view technological advancement as one of the most meaningful measures by which non-Western societies might be evaluated, classified and ranked. The result, a strong mindset of linking technological advance to power and autonomy among post-colonial African leaders, is comparable to the logic that drove the cold war race for involvement in space exploration, which remains to date the epitome of technological advances.
Satellite technology development is rarely a matter of hard facts and calculations, as space scientist and Managing Director of the news and analysis website Space in Africa, Temidayo Oniosun stresses: “When people talk about return on investment and satellite technology they usually expect like, you invest a $20m and you get $100m back. But it doesn't work exactly like that. Look at the US, they spend over $20 billion every year on their space program, they don't get $20 billion back in cash. The return on investment is in different things, it is in new inventions, in enhanced capacity, in solving visible problems in the country. So it's the same with Africa.”
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But the question remains: Why now? Considering the precarious political and economical situations of some of the more unexpected newcomers to African satellite operations, getting involved in such costly plans, that have little to no definite profitability seems questionable.
Ethiopia, for instance, launched its first satellite while grappling with a severe drought and famine and Sudan in the midst of the political and economic crisis that followed the ousting of long-term leader Al-Bashir. Perhaps the pan-African development towards astronomical futures is not as sudden and off the cuff as it appears.
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(Re)imagining African futures
Since the success of Marvel’s 2018 blockbuster superhero movie Black Panther, Afrofuturism is a term that most people have at least heard of. The film, that incorporated a broad mix of cultures from across the continent in the futurist setting of the fictional African nation Wakanda grossed 77,6 million rand (just under $6.5 million) in South Africa and its neighbouring countries, another 102.4 million Kenyan shillings (just over $1 million) in cinemas in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, and Rwanda and 642,5 million Naira ($1.77 million) in Nigeria, Ghana, and Liberia within the first three weeks after its release. It ended up being the highest-grossing film ever in East, West and southern Africa.
There is something about the Wakandan dream, that resonated with the visions of self-representation reverberating through pan-African sentiments. Kenyan actress Lupita Nyongo, who starred in the movie as the character Nakia, referred to Wakanda as “a reimagining of what would have been possible if Africa hadn’t been colonized if African had been allowed to realize itself for itself”.
“A reimagining of what would have been possible if Africa hadn’t been colonized if African had been allowed to realize itself for itself”.
- Lupita Nyongo
Allowing this thought experiment and imagining an independent and truly self-determined future for Africans, is the essence of the Afrofuturist movement. Although the genre of Afrofuturism originated in Afro-American culture, the philosophy behind it is deeply rooted in the African continent and started taking African societies by storm several years before the movie debuted.
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Narratives from within and outside of the continent really began shifting in the early 2000s. In 2000 the Economists' titled “The hopeless continent”, in 2011 the cover read “Africa Rising”. In 2017 the director of the IMF’s African Department praised the continent’s sustained economic development: Since 1990, three-quarters of the countries in the region had registered at least 10 years of uninterrupted growth, and over one-third of the countries had registered 20 years or more of uninterrupted growth.
According to a report by the African Development Bank, the countries leading the decline of multi-dimensional poverty in sub-Saharan Africa with the highest level of human development also have the highest levels of social and political empowerment. The growing African middle class, as keen users of mobile phones and the internet, plugged into the digital world and international news are emerging opinion-makers and agents of reform and change. In many African countries such as Cameroon, the DRC, Gabon, the Gambia, Kenya, Mali, Senegal, Sudan and Togo, the sight of citizens taking over the streets to demand equality, fairness, justice, dignity and democracy is becoming increasingly common.
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At the same time, an upsurge in entrepreneurship that has been dubbed ‘Africa’s business revolution’, not least driven by a blossoming tech-scene, is fueling innovation on the continent. According to a GSMA report in 2019 the number of tech hubs across Africa grew by 40% as opposed to the previous year.
This environment is not only opening up new opportunities for social mobility but also empowering a young and dynamic generation and their visions of a future. Surveys suggest that they are strikingly optimistic about it. For example, a McKinsey global citizen survey conducted in 2017 found that nearly two-thirds of Nigerians believed their country would be better for the next generation. In the United Kingdom, by contrast, 60% of respondents thought the next generation would be worse off.
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The places to find colourful, rhythmic, poetic and action-packed expressions of the utopian ideas born out of this optimism are in the countries’ vibrant arts and culture scenes. The past few years have seen futurist artists across the continent become increasingly visible and carve their own unique interpretations of the genre that originally emerged in the African diaspora - Afrofuturism.
The underlying philosophy of futurism first emerged during the European industrial revolution, when Italian poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti in 1909 published the Manifesto of Futurism in which he expressed an artistic philosophy that was a rejection of the past and a celebration of speed, machinery, youth and industry. Central to Marinetti’s Futurism was the desire to cast off the burden of the past, so as to enable a process of constant self-reinvention and although his later collaboration with the fascist regime makes drawing parallels highly controversial, the initial ignition spark for this way of fusing art and social transformation does seem comparable to “Africa rising” as a point of departure for the Afrofuturist movement across the continent.
The new faces of Afrofuturism
“The sci-fi element in my work is all about giving people this perspective that you can imagine, you can dream with the little that you have and create magic.”
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- Osborne Macharia
“Afrofuturism to me is an artistic repurpose of a postcolonial African narrative by integrating historical elements, present culture and future aspirations of people of colour in order to reimagine a new Africa. So it's Africa that people know of but taking it forward. It shows you elements that are familiar, so it’s nothing totally ‘out of this world’ but when you look at it it gives you a utopian feeling, that there is hope in the future.”, explains Kenyan photographer and visual artist Osborne Macharia. In his work, he has often used the scrap metal that one finds all around his city Nairobi to make space helmets and other futuristic-looking outfits or robotic body parts for his photo models. “The sci-fi element in my work is all about giving people this perspective that you can imagine, you can dream with the little that you have and create magic.”
But Macharia is not in it alone. The artists from across the continent that ascribe to the genre are just as diverse as the continent itself. In Nigeria, Daniel Obasi, a stylist and director released ‘An Alien in Town’, a short film following two fashionable humans who discover and help to train an alien to fit within the Lagos metropolis. In the DRC , painter Eddy Kamuanga Ilunga, interweaves Congolese indigenous heritage and identity with the impacts of digital technology. Zambian illustrator, NomesDee, primarily focuses on portraiture and the ideas of representation in modern mass media, creating visuals where black girl magic and Afrofuturism meet. In music there are the likes of the Ghanaian singer Jojo Abot’s psychedelic tunes or Malian Grammy-winning Oumou Sangaré who set out to redefine Afrofuturism through dance in music videos. And after having been worn by Beyoncé, the Senegalse designer Selly Raby Kane’s fashion, that has been referred to as “wearable afro-cosmology” is making global rounds.
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The question, however, lingers in the back of some minds: What do photographs and music videos have to do with real-life satellite launches? The assumption is that not only do society’s sentiments reflect in arts and culture but also the other way around: Scientific imagination shapes social imagination.
In an experimental study published in 2016 a group of German scholars provide evidence for this idea, that science fiction provides meaning for otherwise disconcerting futures. In the experiment, two groups were shown two different movies. One of them had a humanoid robot in the main role, the other did not feature any at all. Afterwards the participants of the first group not only had a clearer understanding of humanoids but also expressed a higher willingness to buy or use humanoid robot technology themselves. The results remained stable even weeks after watching the movie. What these findings suggest that seeing certain representations of advanced scenarios can make us link these to ourselves and the ideas about how our own future should look like. Afrofuturism in thought shapes Afrofuturism in expression and vice versa.
Or as the Kenyan artist, Osborne Macharia puts it: “I think the idea that is behind our art is also definitely picking up in society as a whole and the interest in our art shows that there is a hunger of Kenyans and other Africans to own their own identity. When we are doing exhibitions, I have had conversations with people who express that they feel like they want to own their future, they want to have a say, they want something different.”
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The African Union’s space policy of 2016 was born out of the AU Agenda 2063, a framework for the transformation of the African continent for an integrated, prosperous, and peaceful Africa. It is premised on “The Africa We Want”, a slogan that could hardly be more Afrofuturist. A recent study comparing the dominant perspectives on urban futures in Africa to emerging alternative policy approaches found that the Agenda 2063 is in fact consistent with, and likely even informed by, the prevalent futurist perspectives on the continent. After the 2018 blockbuster movie “Black Panther” commentators even linked the vision of the agenda to the utopia of Wakanda: Africa redefining itself, by itself, for itself.
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Ironically the aims stated in the Pan-African space policy in part read quite similarly to the manifesto published by the Zambian ‘crackpot’ Edward Mukuka Nkoloso in the 1960s. In it he writes: “Our rocket crew is ready. Specially trained space girl Matha Mwamba, two cats (also specially trained) and a missionary will be launched in our first rocket. But I have warned the missionary, he must not force Christianity on the people in Mars if, they do not want it.” So far so crazy but he goes on to declare that “the capital of the new scientific Zambia must look beautiful. People from afar must not see a slum as the capital of the world’s greatest scientific state. Zambians are inferior to no men in science technology.”
A statement that could undoubtedly be read in line with the space policies proclamations such as: “If Africa is to leapfrog into the technological advancements of the 21st century, the continent needs to develop an adequate number of indigenous space scientists, engineers and related professionals who will actively contribute to finding solutions to continental problems.”
From dream to take-off
By putting words to action, founding space programmes and launching satellites the African leaders who signed the AU space policy are sending a message to the citizens of their own countries and the world: We are here, we have our own ambition for our futures and we have the drive to achieve them.
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World populations estimates indicate that by the year 2063, Africa will be nearly 30% of the world population. It seems logical for a continent that sizable to aim for a presence on the world’s economic and political stage to match it. And that despite - or as Dr. Nana Ama Browne Kluste, Ghanaian space research scientist and member of the committee that drafted the AU policy, puts it - especially because of persisting challenges:
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“I do not agree with those people that claim that space science is not an African thing. Because if it is not an African thing, then what is it? We have more problems to solve than any other continent which means if there is a technology that can help solve the problems we have, that is what we have to jump at.”
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But is launching satellites into space enough?
“The simple thing is that people think we are too poor to go into space. People think we have too many problems to solve than to go into space. But what people don’t know is that space science can solve 90% of the problems that we have in Africa if we decide to go into it. One day I had to argue with someone that there are even beggars in China and China has built space crafts, China has satellites in space. Even in the US people still beg on the streets. We can’t solve everyone's problem before we go into space but rather going into space can solve a majority of the problems.”, Dr. Kluste defends her stance.
The Nigerian based space analyst Temidayo Oniosun agrees that the potential that lies in the industry is highly underestimated. According to his company’s analyses, African space industry has had a growth rate of almost 40% over the past four years, far above the global space industry’s growth rate of less than 10% over the same period. Furthermore the number of sub-Saharan African countries with satellites in space at the moment and that number is said to more than double in the next four years.
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And some countries dreams do not end there. Nigeria has even announced plans to send an astronaut to space by 2030. Dr. Klutse encourages dreaming big: “Putting an astronaut in space by 2030 for me is not even a big deal because we are already almost there, I mean it has been done before.Of course for Africans to do it there are some challenges but doing it is not too far from reality”, she says and later adds, “You know in the 60s when the American President said we are going to the moon, he didn’t have any idea about the science of how that was going to happen but it was a challenge he put on the scientists and engineers and they had to work together towards that goal. So we have to challenge ourselves.”
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If Edward Mukuka Nkoloso, the first ever budding afronaut, who during his first ‘rocket’ launch on Zambia’s independence day 1964 is said to have proclaimed “we know science, we are educated, not only you whites, so this is the thing we are showing you” were here today, he could probably not agree more.
About the Authors
George Sichinga,
Zambia
George is a Zambian Mundus student interested in Development Journalism, Economics and Policy. He is headed to City University of London to specialise in Business and Finance Reporting. He has written features for Zambia Daily Mail and Times of Zambia. Since 2012, George has worked for ZANIS covering ordinary people’s stories from across Zambia’s 10 regions.
Natalie Beck, Germany/ Kenya
Natalie is a German-Kenyan Multimedia Producer and Journalist. She has a passion for documentary film and is highly curious about new forms of interactive and immersive storytelling. Having grown up on two continents, choosing the specialisation Journalism and Media across Cultures almost came naturally.
