Nigeria: Emerging Nation Status Soon?

Ask people what their first thought is when they hear the word "Nigeria" and what will they answer? More likely than not, the first association they make is ye olde "419 Scam", a rip-off that typically starts with an e-mail that should have been deleted unread. For sure not only Nigerian internet criminals use this ploy, but the "Nigeria connection" did originally invent it. Sadly, this is not just the first, but also the only thing many people can think of. But I think Nigeria is worth taking a closer look at and here's why ...

(Lesen Sie diesen Artikel hier auf Deutsch) 

Let me state two things right away: Yes, I am aware that I am taking some recourse to generalisations. But this is a blog article, not a scientific treatise - it's just not possible to the level of detail the subject would warrant. And no, I certainly cannot claim to be an expert on Africa or Nigeria. I'm only an engineer who is interested in how people and nations use technology to further their development. And I'm very interested - this has to do with my personal history - in how nations overcome pernicious poverty and lack of economic development.  

I have always been interested in Nigeria. I never accepted the popular pessimism concerning African development. On the contrary: I believe that Africa, led by those countries that benefit from certain advantages, will very soon make a dramatic recovery from that vicious circle of poverty, violence and corruption that unfortunately still to a large extent is typical of the continent's situation.  

Obviously I don't expect that this recovery will take place at the same pace everywhere or that there won't be setbacks. Given the enormous ethnic, religious, cultural and economic diversities, why should everything run smoothly? And I also don't think that Africa's development will follow that of other emerging nations. Africa is different, so its development will be different. Just look at today's coming economic giants: China, India and Brazil. Each of these is following its own path.  

I am convinced that the Federal Republic of Nigeria will be among the African countries that benefit from special advantages. With 155 million inhabitants (in 2009), Nigeria is by far the most populous country in Africa; it is number 8 in the world - ahead of Russia and Japan. After having been ruled by military dictators for more than three decades, democratisation began in 1999. Admittedly, much remains to be done.

Nigeria possesses vast oil resources and is a member of OPEC. In the past decade, rising crude oil prices have fueled considerable economic growth of 3-6% per year. This does not translate into an equivalent rise in public wealth - due to the annual population growth of 2% ... and also the still rampant corruption. Furthermore, crude oil accounts for the vast majority of Nigeria's exports. That is a legacy of the military rule. Nigeria will have to diversify its economy to maintain sustainable growth.

It is interesting to observe which technologies are used in developing nations. These often do not simply emulate the developed world. Technology is inherently conservative; it is very hard to replace obsolete but widespread technical standards. But countries that do not yet have a lot of technological infrastructure in place are free leap-frog intermediate steps and pioneer completely new solutions. In some African countries, cellular phones are used like a portable bank account and electronic purse - by individuals who are not considered as account-worthy customers by banks. I think this is great. When technology joins forces with necessity, anything becomes possible.

Nigeria in Space

I am a spacecraft engineer, therefore, unsurprisingly, I am interested in space technology. I think that the way a nation approaches space is a sort of litmus test that indicates how serious its leaders are in their willingness to develop. Spacecraft are no longer available only to powerful, advanced nations. Niowadays, any university can build a functioning satellite. This however is not true for rockets. One does need a fair-sized rocket to launch any decent-sized spacecraft (i.e., one with at least a few hundreds of kg of mass) into low Earth orbit - the minimum requirement for useful applications such as space based Earth observation, atmospheric science, prospecting or telecommunications. 

However, there is no lack of launch service providers for moderate payloads into the low Earth orbit. Many former ballistic missiles have been converted to commercial launch vehicles, thus effectively turning swords into plowshares. And then there is quite a number of newly developed rockets on the market. So if you want to launch any payload of between, say several hundreds of kilograms and two tons into any orbit between low Earth and geostationary, you will have lots of choice. 

Any nation that is sincerely interested in using space to further its development does not need to build its own rocket; they can find a launch service provider. Some providers may be politically unacceptable, no sweat, there are plenty of competitors.

So if a nation sets out to design their own rocket without even having a space program (such as North Korea or Iran), this nation isn't going about it the right way. In such cases, one should question their motivation: They might in fact be developing a ballistic missile (which indeed is not so easy to obtain commercially) under the guise of a civilian rocket program or pulling off some other political stunt. Dictatorships like doing such things that really don't do anything at all to advance their nation.

Nigeria definitely is not of this ilk. The Nigerian government appears to be serious about acquiring national expertise in key technologies through international collaboration. The logical sequence is:

1. learn how to use satellites,
2. learn how to build and use satellites, 
3. learn how to build, launch and use satellites.

Nigeria's space policy is adhering to this logical sequence, and that's a good thing.

In 1999, in the wave of change that swept the country following the end of the military rule, the National Space Research and Development Agency NASRDA was created. The first NASRDA satellite, the Earth observation satellite NigeriaSat-1, was built in Great Britain by SSTL, a company specializing in small satellite platforms. Nigeriasat-1 was launched in 2003 on a Russian Cosmos rocket. A micro-satellite with a launch mass of 140 kg, it is part of a multi-satellite constellation especially for disaster relief support. Other satellites in the Disaster Monitoring Constellation (DMC) are being operated by Great Britain, Algeria, Turkey, China and Vietnam. A program can hardly be more useful, beneficial, international and cooperative than that.

This made Nigeria the second sub-Saharan country after South Africa to own a satellite. Procurement and development evolved in parallel with the training of personnel that would operate the spacecraft from the Nigerian space control centre in the nation's capital, Abuja. These experts constitute the core of the expanding Nigerian space competence.

Inevitably, there are those who claim that Nigeria didn't get its priorities right. I think that such criticism is parochial and blinkered. But it is also a remarkable sign of progress that governmental decisions can be openly discussed and criticized. Still, some of the criticism is clearly unfair and uninfomed - a sign that those who voiced the criticism may have harbored unrealistic expectations about what can reasonably be expected of a tiny Earth observation satellite. Some criticized that a bad plane crash hand not been observed by the satellite (well, doh, if the satellite wasn't over Nigeria at the time?). Others bickered that no warning was issued beforehand in those events when locals tried to steal petroleum from a pipeline and caused a fires (ditto ... and furthermore, one should not over-estimate the image resolution achievable with small space-based optics).

2007 saw the launch of the first Nigerian geostationary communications satellite, NigComSat-1, built and launched in China. This failed in 2008 - quite a setback, also in financial terms, as the failure left the operator Nigerian Communications Satellite without a space segment and with no transponder capacity to offer on the market. Luckily for Nigeria the warranty had not run out when the satellite failed. A replacement satellite will be built and launched for free, though not before 2011.

The next Earth observation satellite, NigeriaSat-2, will again be built by SSTL. Launch is foreseen for late 2010 from a Russian base. Still a small satellite, this will be significantly more powerful than its "little brother". Space-based Earth observation and telecommunications are precisely the kind of applications a large, not widely developed country needs. The earthquake disaster relief effort in Haiti demonstrated how indispensable up-to-date satellite imagery is in such situations. This imagery is just as indispensable in everyday use for development, wilderness management and environmental protection. 

NigeriaSat-1 images of the 2005 New Orleans flood by hurricane Katrina, Source: DMC International Imaging

Lately, reports on more ambitious projects have surfaced. There has been talk about the first Nigerian astronaut (Why not, all they have to do is to pay the Russians to train a candidate and offer him a seat in a Soyuz spaceship, like South Korea did) and of nationally designed and built satellites, which would be the second step of the logical sequence of events and should be within the capabilities of NASRDA.

Then, a Nigerian launch vehicle has been mentioned. Some press articles stated that it would be used to launch geostationary satellites. I find that rather unlikely. Firstly, geostationary satellites are no longer the growth market they once used to be. What would be the point of trying to compete with the numerous providers that already saturate this segment? Secondly, despite its location near the equator, Nigeria is not a suitable location for launches into the geostationary transfer orbit. To do that, you have to launch due East. From Nigeria, the rocket would have to cross half the continent and numerous populated areas. Not a good idea. It is much better and a lot more sensible to envisage launches to sun-synchronous Earth observation orbits. Then you have to launch into a direction of around 190 deg, i.e., just a tad to the West of due South. Nothing but the South Atlantic there, and then the Antarctic, and coming up on the other side, the Pacific - no risk of hitting inhabitant regions.

I am sure there still is lots of scope for improvement in Nigeria. But some things are going right and there is no point in just harping on the bad and not mentioning the good. We just have to remember where that nation was 10 years ago and what they have achieved since then. Any nation as large as Nigeria has no alternative to embracing technological advance. It will have to develop or it will collapse under its population growth. If Nigeria succeeds in becoming an emerging nation, it will eventually become an economic powerhouse that will advance all of West Africa. If Nigeria fails ... well, I don't even want to consider that possibility. It doesn't bear thinking about. At any rate, it was a wise and perspicacious move to approach space technology in this fashion. A nation that does not have the means to harness space technology will not be able to develop. It's that simple.

I for one wish Nigeria success. OK, so the Super Eagles' performance at the 2010 World Cup wasn't exactly stellar. Better luck 2014 in Brazil - it will be interesting to see how Nigeria will have advanced until then. 

---

The above article was originally written in German and published on kosmologs.de as a contribution to a series of 32 articles that highlighted selected aspects of the scientific and technological environment of each of the nations competing in the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.

 

Related Articles:

• Pictures of the December 10 Total Lunar Eclipse
• October's Comet: Hartley 2
• It's a bird, it's a plane .... it's Stratolaunch
• Tunguska - Whodunit?
• Apollo - What was the Point?