African Youth Engagement with Global Space Governance: The Case of Arizona State University's Interplanetary Initiative Space Governance Innovation Contest

Introduction

The increasing number of space activities by an increasing diversity of space actors has revealed a number of gaps in global space governance. Space powers, intergovernmental organizations, civil society organizations and private companies have started to tackle the current and impending governance issues pertaining to the utilization of outer space. However, many developing countries lack the capacity to address the current array of space governance concerns. Enhancing the knowledge, skills and work experience of young people is an important means of cultivating a workforce able to contribute to global, regional and domestic space governance challenges'. The resolution adopted at the African Leadership Conference on Space Science and Technology in Ethiopia in 2019 stated, inter alia, that African youth should be central to the development of the African space agenda.¹ This emphasis on young people as priority future space decision makers and implementers is a transitional and transformational endeavor that represents a change in the African outer space ecosystem. The resolution therefore provides a policy window of opportunity and understanding the complexity of the emerging outer space ecosystem is important to better forecast its implications, opportunities, and challenges.

Broadly, an ecosystem is a network of interacting parts that evolve over time. The development of outer space activities will undoubtedly require organizations to focus on the integration and interdependence of multiple platforms. As Paikosky argues that observing “old space” and “new space” through the prism of an ecosystem means no one element defines the differences between the old and the new, the important thing is the recognition that changes are a result of an overall mix of elements that have changed to form a new ecosystem. The “old space” ecosystem refers to national activity controlled by the superpowers and their close allies.² Gradually, as space capabilities have become more accessible through new technologies and lower costs of access to space, two new types of players have joined global space activities—small and developing countries and private sector players who represent the “new space” ecosystem.²

These new players have introduced significant changes to the interconnections and interactions in the ecosystem of space. The domain that they are operating in is near space (the portion of the atmosphere between commercial air space and low Earth orbit), allowing the more traditional actors to differentiate their activities and begin to shift their focus to missions into deep space (the portion of space beyond the Earth-Moon orbit) as is demonstrated in the Global Exploration Roadmap.³ This means that, as has been argued, the new space race is no longer between national space programs vying for dominance but a complex network of multiple actors ranging from developing countries to private actors (who could be acting as indirect agents of the state of their nationality) working toward differing goals.⁴

Robert Harding posits that it is the quest for both security and development that is pushing developing countries to initiate or expand their space programs and support the private space industry.⁵ However, as developing states have entered the global competition alongside private corporations, in place of the developed countries they represent the argument stands that the privatization of the space race invites a new competitive dynamic between states and corporations with relative parity, rather than classic intrastate competition.⁶

How will the playing field be leveled, as these private actors are not subject to the same obligations as these developing country actors and the capacity is low to address the array of concerns that these emerging countries will face? One answer is to leverage the youth, and ensure a future workforce able to contribute to the governance challenges. There are, however, few platforms focused on developing space nations and regions, such as Africa.

The opportunity presented for innovating new space in the context of workforce development is that boundary objects can be created to facilitate positive and cooperative interactions between those who are experienced within the context of the space ecosystem and youth who are entering the ecosystem. Instead of setting those who would be entering the space into a situation of competition, a co-opetition (a blend of competition and cooperation where actors are not on the same team yet not working to the negative end of the other) is a means to provide a positive relationship that involves a positive sum end.

This article sets out the vision of Arizona State University's Space Governance Innovation Contest, an interplanetary initiative, focused on educating and empowering young African space enthusiasts, while making a contribution to the global space ecosystem. The Interplanetary Initiative is a unique pan-university venture led by ASU that has pioneered a new model for integrated research and learning to investigate, communicate, and define the future of humans in outer space.⁷ This article utilizes the 8-element framework developed by Gaughen et al., which are not only foster sustainability of youth engagement initiatives, but also assist in analyzing and documenting the findings of this contest.⁸

The best submissions from the contest are published in this special issue as “Voices of the New Space Generation.” The winning submission by Haroun et al. titled “Towards the Sustainability of Outer Space: Addressing the Issue of Space Debris” buttresses the conclusion that environmental considerations, in the form of regulation, have philosophical and moral foundations.

In addition, published in this special issue, Ishola et al. in their piece “Legal Enforceability in International Space Policy: An Appraisal of 1967 Outer Space Treaty” highlight that the Outer Space Treaty fails to provide for remedies and sanctions in case of breach of its provisions and none of the space treaties refer to the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space. In “Towards African Space Autonomy: Developmental Framework and Incorporated Synergies,” Asiyanbola et al. argue there is a need for African space autonomy before being able to impact any of these other issues of global space governance. Other insights from unpublished submissions included the view that the current space governance regime does not make allowance for space tourists, allows for development of antisatellite tests, lacks institutional frameworks to control outer space activities, and does not adequately support or regulate private activities in outer space.

A Focus on Youth as Foundational

Article 11 of the African Union Youth Charter provides young people with the right to participate in all spheres of society as well as the opportunity and right to be involved in decision making that affects civic life.⁹ Specifically, it provides that State Parties should “facilitate the creation or strengthening of platforms for youth participation in decision making” at all levels of governance.¹⁰ Furthermore, the African Union Space Policy¹⁰ emphasizes the importance of involving young people in space activities while the African Union Space Strategy specifically suggests the implementation of “human capacity development programs that attract the young student population into a postgraduate pipeline that primarily serves the requirements of an indigenous space sector.”¹⁰ Youth participation in decision-making processes, innovation, entrepreneurship, policy planning, and legal reform is, therefore, crucial to the realization of Article 11 of the African Union Youth Charter as well as the African Union Space Policy and Strategy. More generally, it is vital to the sustainability of the African space ecosystem, but there are challenges.

In their study, Youth Policy and the Future of African Development, Gyimah-Brempong and Kimenyi note the lack of uniformity and availability of data on African youth.¹¹ Not only is this a hindrance to undertaking comparative analysis, but it also makes it difficult to obtain both a clear picture of challenges facing young people and the development of African nations toward their space future.

Although the desire to widen the participation of young people in African governance is now welcomed, anecdotal evidence suggests that both public and private youth initiatives are frequently established without a strategy to facilitate long-term existence. Gaughen et al. have identified 8 elements they suggest are necessary for the sustainability, or durability, of youth engagement initiatives: vision, results orientation, strategic financing orientation, adaptability to changing conditions, broad-based community support, key champions, strong internal systems, and sustainability plans.⁸ Vision requires the program to clearly convey its objectives, whereas results orientation demands that measures of success are stipulated, change is monitored, improvements documented, and adjustments made to address objectives that have not been met. The third and fourth elements, namely strategic financing orientation and adaptability to changing conditions, necessitate secure sources of income for the duration of the program and the foresight and ability to “adjust to changing social, economic, and political trends in the community.”⁸ It is also important for youth initiatives to obtain the support and participation of the local community and to “engage individuals who can use their power, knowledge, networks, and resources to help generate support for the initiative.” These two principles are represented by the requirement for broad-based community support and key champions. The final element, sustainable youth initiatives, requires strong internal systems demonstrated by transparent management and accurate information as well as a documented sustainability plan to conduct outreach and raise awareness of the program's existence. The inclusion and continued adherence to these 8 elements in the planning and execution of the Space Governance Innovation Contest will be vital to ensure both the longevity of the contest if there is support for its continuation and the sustained and genuine engagement of young people in the governance of African space activities.

The Space Governance Innovation Contest

The inaugural Space Governance Innovation Contest took place between December 2019 and June 2020 and was organized by ASU's Interplanetary Initiative Space Advisory Project, in collaboration with Space in Africa (an online news hub), the Lagos Court of Arbitration, and the Canadian-based Outer Space Institute.¹² The aim of the contest was to bring together interdisciplinary teams of innovators to (1) identify policy gaps in the Outer Space Treaty 1967 and (2) design model instruments to address the identified gaps.¹² It is recognized that there is a dearth of African perspectives in current dialogue and debates regarding outer space.^13–17 One of the goals of the contest was to generate African ideas about how the future of space exploration and utilization should be governed. By targeting African undergraduate and graduate students and young professionals, the contest encouraged diversity by providing a platform for stakeholders that hitherto have had little access to forums in which space governance is deliberated. Participants also had the opportunity to network and establish mentorships with international space lawyers, industrialists, and academics, thereby strengthening their connections to and within the international space governance community. The contest further strove to advance the space sustainability agenda by seeking the ideas of African youth, a nontraditional source of ideas and knowledge in space policy, in anticipation of facilitating greater opportunity for innovative suggestions regarding the current space governance regime.

The inspiration for the Space Governance Innovation Contest arose from a similar sustainability initiative, the Stockholm Treaty Lab.¹⁸ The Stockholm Treaty Lab encouraged contestant teams to draft a future-looking and implementable model treaty to drive investment in climate change mitigation and adaptation. The winning proposal was required to possess the potential to create stable and transparent policy regimes that could be enforced. Key insights from the discussions around the Stockholm Treaty Lab included the recognition that a contest to generate ideas for a treaty to address a pertinent real-world problem resulted in practical ways forward through tangible proposals. The criteria for the Stockholm Treaty Lab reflected the view that traditional yardsticks of success were not suitable. Rather tailor-made operational measures were required. The same conclusion was made with regard to the Space Governance Innovation Contest. Both contests focused on legal outcomes, yet they were grounded in an interdisciplinary approach with lawyers, scientists, sociologists, and others coming together to engage in discussions across multiple disciplines.

In the Space Governance Innovation Contest, participants were free to decide which space problem to address. However, we hoped for example, that through the contest, emerging experts in the field of investment would recommend provisions and wording that could sustainably and equitably stimulate a space economy or that constitutional experts would suggest provisions that could govern an off-earth society based not just on Western values and principles, but also adopting best practices from all over the world. Other important priorities for new instruments, provisions, and agreements include consideration of space debris, space situational awareness or space traffic management, safe and secure technology sharing and transfer, and the protection of intellectual and other property rights. Finally, in addition to the already discussed need to further develop space law, capacity-building in space policy is also crucial for the future of Africa. For instance, there is currently a reluctance by government policy officials to work with space data services.¹⁹ It was hoped that participants would highlight that space data can be used to create a smarter government and toward making smarter investment decisions.

Logistics

On November 11, 2019, the contest commenced with registration of intent to participate in the contest. By December 13, 2019, a total of 50 individuals registered their intent to participate. Registrants had the option of registering themselves either as individuals or as teams of two-four members. Participants submitted basic demographic information such as their country of origin, country they currently reside in, and their area of study or expertise. When individually registered, the contest project manager assembled them into appropriately sized teams based on the country participants resided in and fields of expertise. These criteria were to maximize the interdisciplinarity of assembled teams while attempting to keep participants in similar time zones for logistical meeting purposes.

This registration period gave the organizing team time to prepare resources that would be needed to support the number of participants and gave the organizers an insight into the potential level of interest. Submission of entries commenced on December 14, 2019, and a total of nine entries from the work of 34 participants were received by the deadline of February 14, 2020. These nine entrants were invited to give presentations on their submissions to an expert panel of judges who chose five entrants to advance to a secondary round of oral argumentation on June 4, 2020. This secondary round of presentations were given digitally before a select panel of judges at the American Society of International Law during an even titled ‘Governance Innovation’.²⁰ Three submissions were encouraged and indeed submitted a version of their articles to the New Space journal for peer review.

Reflections on Outcomes of the Space Governance Innovation Contest

Despite issues arising from the global COVID-19 pandemic, participants demonstrated clarity of thought, academic engagement, resilience, and adaptability during the time of uncertainty. The COVID-19 global pandemic almost certainly impacted the number of entries received and increased the timescale and effort necessary to ensure ongoing engagement. Adaptability and creativity were therefore important to make the contest a success. This necessitated the oral rounds that were not originally planned as part of the final implementation of the contest. Given the unexpected closure of many businesses and offices, most of the prizes initially offered as part of the contest, including the nine virtual internships, were no longer available. Nevertheless, despite the lack of tangible incentives, the commitment of participants was clear—their main priority was to ensure the existence of the contest and that their involvement with it was publicized and their ideas would be heard by the judges. The winning team, however, was able to participate in an arbitration training at the Lagos Court of Arbitration.²¹ These students went on to win the prizes available in that training there too. This training was important because alternative dispute resolution is at least partially influenced by the lived experienced and perspectives of the arbitrators and neutrals selected, and these people are the gatekeepers. Very few of the known arbitration experts selected to represent disputing space actors are African.²²

To allow all teams equitable means of competition, the contest project manager provided several key systems of support to keep participants engaged. One of these support systems was the provision of electronic research materials. Whether due to unstable Internet access or a lack of institutional journal subscriptions, access to online scholarly publications and reports can be a limiting factor in academic research in developing countries. In an effort to overcome this obstacle, upon request by the participants, the project manager provided what materials could be accessed. This support system was instrumental for some teams as they would not have had access to these materials otherwise without paying exorbitant fees. In addition, biweekly emails were also sent to participants. These emails served not only to remind contestants of the resources at their disposal through the contest project manager but also to help keep contestants on track with the short deadline. As registration for the contest closed on December 13, 2019, and submissions were due 2 months thereafter, the project manager liaised with teams to determine progress while also answering any questions the contestants had through email. Furthermore, 2 webinars were hosted in December 2020 between the contest organizers and potential participants.

The winning team at the Space Governance Innovation Contest won scholarships to attend the Annual Lagos Court of Arbitration Training for International Arbitration Certificate Programs (Beginners Class). The students engaged with tutors and asked intelligent questions during the training school. At the end of the training school, the LCA organized a knowledge test based on the contents of the training and awarded prizes to those who emerged winners in the knowledge test.

Of the five winners, two of the student participants at the Space Governance Innovation Contest also emerged winners at the LCA Training School Knowledge Test.

Findings from Open Innovation

Research has demonstrated that prize competitions can yield a wide range of cross-disciplinary potential solutions to global problems.²³ NASA, for instance, has hosted approximately 400 competitions that have enabled the global public to use wide-ranging expertise and problem-solving strategies to generate innovative solutions to space utilization problems.²⁴ The Space Innovation Governance Contest sought to address pertinent questions, namely (1) how can dominant narratives of space governance be positively influenced by opinions of aspiring and relatively new space actors and (2) how can we best design a platform or forum that supports continual engagement by participations particularly African youth, a nontraditional source of ideas and knowledge used for the generation of space law and policy.

Research from Harvard Business school showed that 75% of solutions already exist and 70% of people who solved a hard problem were from a different technical/industry domain than the problem owner.^24,25 “African students are certainly not the problem owners of space debris, space congestion and space as a warfighting domain, but they need to play a role in determining future governance regimes for human futures in space as well as the growing amount of space activities projected to come on line.”²⁶ Several outcomes are associated with the use of open innovation to gain solutions to governance problems. The four points discussed below are some outcomes of the contest:

Building Community in Open Innovation

The nature of the space landscape that we have tried to create, is guided by principles of co-opetition. Here an atmosphere of friendly competition was fostered with the objective that capacity increase of all actors was the priority. Participants went on to develop research networks for future collaboration.

Provide Opportunity

There are very few space related platforms for the demographic of African youth. Through a global contest focused on the African youth, participants bolstered their confidence and they were also provided the opportunity to present their ideas to the American Society of International Law and engage with the publication process. This aligns with the aims of the United Nations Office of Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA) which also recognizes that capacity building among actors in the space sector, in particular developing nations, is of paramount importance.²⁷

Demonstration of Low-Cost Equity, Inclusion and Diversity Initiatives

The contest itself was a low-cost endeavor but required commitment and time dedication. More support would be needed through logistical partnerships to aid in the implementation of the contest through the drafting the contest questions, pooling industry connections, fundraising and planning prizes. Through this contest numerous low-cost Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) objectives were demonstrated. EDI research has unveiled that access to training and development opportunities can significantly influence the future career trajectory of an individual. It is our hope that this contest has provided a solid foundation to propel the careers of future African leaders.²⁸

Global Access to Nontraditional Insights

There is a perception that the goal for developing countries in space utilization is driven by an almost exclusive interest in its benefits but they fall prey to the claim that there has been little reciprocity in either financial or scientific contributions. However, many of the contest submissions focused on the global public interest through, for example, addressing the importance of sustainability of the space environment and the idea of funding being used for that purpose. Further research that explores the views of African from all space users young people as to whether outer space is a global commons and what that means practically would be beneficial to the field of international space law and governance. In turn, the results from such a study would be relevant to policies that are intended to address the important and pressing issues of space debris, space resources, space security and space settlement.

Ultimately, it is recognized that global access to non-traditional insights will be needed to spur innovation and cooperation in the space sector. Capacity building initiatives like this contest help to elevate the voices of underrepresented stakeholders in the space sector, aligning well with the overall objectives of the United Nations SDGs and more specifically, with activities geared towards elevating youth in the space sector like the Space4Youth project.²⁹

Conclusion

The Space Governance Innovation Contest provided a much-needed platform for African young people to consider space governance issues and propose possible solutions and a structured environment that provides exposure to a network of academic and industry experts—an endeavor that has thus far been uncommon. To build upon its progress, public and private initiatives should continue to cultivate a passionate interest in outer space among Africa's youth and contribute to space law and governance in a manner that is equally beneficial to African states as it has been for traditional space powers.

The new space ecosystem will only be fair and sustainable if all stakeholder groups, including those from under-represented jurisdictions such as Africa, play an active role in advancing the conversation on global space governance. It is particularly important to ensure the adequate representation and participation of young people, whose contributions are pertinent to developing the space ecosystem in Africa and positioning Africa strategically in the international space community. These objectives are in tandem with the African Union's African Space Policy¹⁰ and the AU's African Outer Space Strategy and Agenda 2063.³⁰

Our aim has been to suggest that a platform such as the Space Governance Innovation Contest can be utilized by young people from African nations, a traditionally excluded group in the space ecosystem, to positively contribute to narratives regarding space governance. Areas for future research include assessing the degree to which such contributions can influence and change dominant American/Euro-centric space governance narratives.

As with other parts of the world, young people have a crucial role to play in optimizing the development of Africa's space endeavors. Youth space initiatives implemented to support the advancement of the African space industry can be further enhanced by focusing on sustainability, fostering interdisciplinary partnerships, and ensuring all or most of the elements identified by Gaughen et al. are present. As custodians of the future African space industry, young people need to be equipped both to participate competitively in the global space market and to sustain and advance the gains that have recently been made. One of the most effective means of achieving this objective is by enabling young people to capitalize on the window of opportunity presented by the growing global space industry through contributions to dialogue on current and future space governance regimes.

Author Disclosure Statement

No competing financial interests exist.

Funding Information

The contest and authors of this paper were in part funded by the Interplanetary Initiative at ASU.