The Story Behind the Zambian Space Program

Before Zambia’s Independence Day in October 1964, Edward Makuka Nkoloso announced to the press, and all who would listen, the formation of the Zambian Space Program. He promised to beat both the United States and the USSR in sending humans to the Moon and pledged to send trained cats to Mars. He immediately asked the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) for seven billion dollars to support his effort. UNESCO rejected his ask. He also requested money from Israel, the USSR, the United States, and the United Arab Republic, none of which replied. However, he did receive small donations from individuals around the world.

The idea that a newly independent, land-locked country could fulfill such promises seems preposterous at first glance. The proposal was globally ridiculed at the time. With a perspective of over 60 years however, this might be the time to reexamine Nkoloso's pronouncement and gain a better understanding of what his non-celestial aims might have been. 

Nkoloso was born in the British colony that was then known as northern Rhodesian in 1919.   The British drafted him during World War II  into the Northern Rhodesia Regiment. He served as a sergeant in the Signal Corp and used his wartime language skills as a translator for the colonial Northern Rhodesian government. He later opened new school, which he accused the British of shutting down for political reasons. As the Zambian resistance movement grew, Nkoloso proclaimed himself the founder of the Zambian National Academy of Science, Space Research, and Philosophy.  Northern Rhodesia achieved independence and became Zambia in October 1964.

Nkoloso's plans for a Zambian space program were not just a paper proposal.  He offered curious reporters physical and action details of his program for preparing "Afronauts" for spaceflight. His chosen name for the Zambian space travelers was a deliberate play on Cold War cosmonaut/astronaut titles that the USSR and the U.S. had chosen. And even though the new nation was landlocked and without an indigenous rocketry industry, he offered evidence of rocket hardware that the Zambian space program would use. The rocket, D-Kalu 1, was a 10-foot by 6-foot drum-shaped vessel. The name was partially based on the name of the first Zambian president, Kenneth David Kaunda.  Nkoloso claimed its metal composition of aluminum and copper made it space-worthy. He recruited among his students and planned to send a 17-year-old girl into space using the D-Kalu 1 launch vehicle. Nkoloso promised the press that the first launch would take place on October 24, 1964, Zambian Independence Day. The launch site was to be Independence Stadium, Nkoloso later claimed that the new government denied him access to the space. 

As the press became more interested, the plans and training for the Zambian space program became more elaborate. Nkoloso introduced the world to the Zambian Space Academy, where many teenagers rolled down hills in forty-gallon oil drums to simulate weightlessness. His students tied long ropes to trees to demonstrate the Mulolo (swinging) system that could simulate the sensation of freefall or microgravity and served as a potential means of launch into space. At one point, Nkoloso presented two cats, claiming he was training for a mission to Mars. Of course, without reliable and vigorous funding and sustained press interest, the Zambian Space Program could not sustain itself. The students went on to other things and the training facility fell into disrepair.

Even as the interest in and infrastructure of the Zambian Space Program waned, Nkoloso kept up his campaign on the importance of de-colonialism and the scars that European rule had left in Africa. In hindsight, the reporters who flocked to the Zambian Space Academy had missed his point entirely. While the wave of new African states took up the call of the fundamental right of national self-determination in the 1950s and 1960s, the U.S. and the USSR were determined to spend tens of billions of dollars for a space race to the Moon while the needs here on Earth were apparent. At least part of Nkoloso's claims was satirizing the space race by setting it in the context of a ravaged and recently liberated country. 

Parody was not Nkoloso's only goal. This story of the Afronauts has endured in popular culture for the last 60 years. Writers and historians periodically revisit the episode. In this century, filmmakers have screened a short film based on Nkoloso's proclamations. So, what is the final legacy of Nkoloso's claim? Beyond being a long-standing thread among historians of the future and those who study Afrofuturism, the idea of Afronauts remains a placeholder for the idea of an African-based exploration and exploitation of outer space. In relative terms, Nkoloso's idea in 1964 was no more fanciful than the ideas of Jules Verne, the stories of Buck Rogers, or any other space science fiction decades before the launch of Sputnik. In many ways, he established a symbol that expanding into outer space should be open to all nations. 

The African Union will form the African Space Agency in April 2025. The agency traces its statutory history to a 2016 agreement. Soon, 55 member states divided into five regions of Africa, of which Zambia is a member through the Southern Africa region, will meet for its formal inauguration in Cairo. They have no immediate plans to send humans into space, but they plan to share the benefits of astronomy, global positioning systems, communications, and Earth observation with all the continent's nations. It took over 60 years, but Nkoloso's plans for an African-based space program have taken root.