Antifragility and African Space Development
The inauguration of the African Space Agency (AfSA) on January 25, 2023 heralded a decades long push for a continental agency to direct space affairs within Africa. In this series, Kwaku Sumah examines the stated aims and goals of the agency, and asks, is it possible for the AfSA to achieve its stated aims as designed?
Read the previous Parts One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six
Read the final Part Eight
The previous analysis revealed that countries and regions that have been active in the space industry for several decades, have all pivoted from their initial approach to employ new strategies better suited to the modern space landscape. While the regional and national contexts are markedly different, the ensuing strategies share several commonalities.
The key lessons learned for Africa and AfSA are the following:
The model of large, centrally directed space activities was born in the 1960s as a result of the Space Race. In those days, large investments were required to develop rocket and satellite technologies for military and space exploration purposes. As a result, total government control was a precondition for global competitiveness.
In the current space regime, a strong private sector is required to be competitive globally. Falling costs have reduced entry barriers, leading to the rise of new entrants who employ agile and iterative methods that governments and continental/regional unions are unable to copy. Consequently, barring space research, space exploration, and large infrastructure projects, centralised control by a singular body rather impedes the development of a globally competitive space industry.
This is also the case when it comes to R&D and technology development. While government investments may raise the technological level, it can also create an industry that is highly sensitive to public funding and the political landscape.
Governments and continental/regional bodies can therefore exert their influence by becoming anchor tenants, creating market demand as the lead customer and/or investor of products and services created by private actors. This stimulates the commercial landscape and helps to reduce the risk to private entities.
In the cases where government demand is insufficient to sustain the industry (e.g. due to limited budgets), they can employ innovative mechanisms to increase investments, and reduce the administrative, legal and risk-taking burden on private actors.
Governments and continental/regional bodies can also focus on promoting adoption of their space components, helping to expand local markets, and promoting their technology standards.
“Successful African private actors are endemic to a vibrant space market that promotes an African-led agenda. Private activity led by government demand can address socio-economic challenges and maximise the benefit of space for the common African citizen.”
The legacy approach to space development pioneered by the U.S. and the former Soviet Union had great merits for their time, and was ultimately very successful for several decades. In addition to creating and spurring technological innovation, the government-led approach also ensured the provision of public goods, such as GPS and the Hubble telescope, which have both greatly impacted modern life. Public goods are typically under-served by market participants due to free-riders who benefit from those goods without paying for them. As a result, these goods are normally provided by the government. In the case of the Space Race, the main goals and outcomes were all largely public goods – namely, space exploration and research, as well as national prestige, pride, and security – necessitating strong government involvement.
This contrasts with the goals of the AfSA, which is to harness the potential benefits of space to address Africa’s socio-economic challenges, strengthen space missions on the continent, develop a vibrant indigenous space market, maximise the benefits of space activities, and promote an African-led space agenda. While some aspects of those goals set in the African Space Policy and Strategy are public goods, achieving those goals largely demands a competitive industry suited to the modern challenges of the space industry. Successful African private actors are endemic to a vibrant space market that promotes an African-led agenda, and private activity led by government demand can address socio-economic challenges and maximise the benefit of space for the common African citizen.
A reduced scope for the AfSA is not only warranted due to the outsized role that the private sector plays in NewSpace. It is also vital to realise the vulnerabilities of consolidated, centralised control –especially in the modern age. Economic theory has long predicted the challenges of centralisation, which include reduced competition and therefore reduced innovation, inefficient resource distribution, delayed response to challenges and external pressures, and limited aggregation of dispersed information. Additionally, policy changes directed by new controlling powers, or a change in direction for policymakers can also impact funding and priorities significantly, which in turn impacts stated objectives.
Centralised control driven by top-down directives is an inherently fragile system. While centralisation can generate benefits such as cost reductions, focused vision and speed of implementation, it assumes that the highest level of management is the most informed and knowledgeable, while relying on a strong management team to determine best practices and make all critical decisions. This structure is stressed with increased complexity of the system, and is continuously assaulted by external factors such as increased volatility and other external stressors - factors that are all too prevalent in the space industry, and in Africa in particular.
In fact, it is becoming clearer every year that disruption and randomness are increasing. As a result, organisations and structures that remain resilient, and even improve with increased disruption and randomness will dominate, while those that are hurt by it will suffer and diminish. In his book Antifragile, Nassim Nicholas Taleb offers the neologism ‘anti-fragile’ to hammer in the point:
“Some things benefit from shocks; they thrive and grow when exposed to volatility, randomness, disorder, and stressors, and love adventure, risk, and uncertainty. … Let us call it antifragile. Antifragility is beyond resilience or robustness. The resilient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better.”[1]
Taleb goes further to remark:
“Good systems such as airlines are set up to have small errors, independent from each other – or, in effect, negatively correlated to each other, since mistakes lower the odds of future mistakes … If every plane crash makes the next one less likely, every bank crash makes the next one more likely.”[2]
If Africa as a whole is aiming to be competitive globally, and is aiming to maximise its own resources and leapfrog foreign developments – it is vital for the continent to build anti-fragile systems. To do so, weak components need to be proactively identified, and systems built that are adaptable to change. A large centralised body coordinating all of Africa’s space activities is neither easily adaptable to change, nor anti-fragile.
Taleb notes that:
“… decentralised systems are better able to learn from randomness because adverse impacts are contained. Decentralised units can watch and learn from each other as each unit improvises in response to unexpected events. Centralized systems are fragile because they make rules that by necessity are more abstract and theoretical so that they can be broadly applicable but at the same time they are removed from the relevant social context.”[3]
To summarise, not only is the traditional centralised approach rendered inappropriate due to the emergence of NewSpace, but also, the increasingly disruptive global economic, political, social and technological landscape necessitates the eschewing of a singular centralised entity controlling affairs. If the AfSA is to achieve its goals, it cannot be solely responsible for the coordination of all African space activities and the development of the African space industry; rather it needs to help create an environment that allows commercial activities to flourish.
When it comes to regional cooperation, the methods employed in Europe and Asia highlight how different dynamics can emerge and still be effective even if dissimilar. European cooperation emerged primarily due to the economic realities of the region following World War II, and a drive to compete with the U.S. and the former Soviet Union. This led to a strong unified European front that was able to leverage existing infrastructures and capabilities. On the other hand, Asian cooperation primarily occurs in the backdrop of the historical and political realities of the region. Regional initiatives and cooperation are mostly tools for the large space powers to influence the region. This has created a competitive dynamic that spurs the rapid development of space capabilities in the region.
Both regions provide insight into how the AfSA could structure itself moving forward.
The final part of the series examines the path forward for the AfSA.
Kwaku Sumah
Kwaku is the founder of Spacehubs Africa, and has been active in the space industry since 2016, working as a consultant for European and African space institutions and companies. He has worked on projects across the entire space value chain, including analysis on downstream markets, space debris evolution, planetary defence, and the launch market; as well as an assessment of the European financing landscape and due diligence on space companies.
