I spent 5 minutes scanning through the headlines of other places in the world other than UK/US/Europe tonight (as you do) seeing what's making news elsewhere which is always interesting: stories still going on that have long since left our screens such at the epidemic in Haiti which is going to be much worse than originally thought , or anti-government protests in Yemen continuing like Bahrain.
Another caught my eye from Nigeria where their space programme is being expanded. Yep, you heard me right. I never knew they had one or thought they ought to have one (how western in that?). And immediately I can hear people saying they should spend the 50million on food and education. I understand that.
But there is a point here about what a space programme actually does for a country and it is what we did during the industrial revolution here where people were hungry but millions was invested in technology. It increases the capacity of the country to earn money and benefits the kind of people who will benefit the country's economy and the broader society.
The Director General of Nigeria's Space Agency, Dr Seidu Mohammed says on a BBC website that it is never meant to be about landing people on the moon but solve problems at home in agriculture, environment, development.
I get that. Britain's industrial revolution did exactly that (well it didn't do much for the environment) but while there were a lot of poor people money was poured into the latest technology which brought the country up into the hugely powerful economy it is today.
It's a point of view I hadn't thought about before. Still wondering about it. What about you?
Recent Comments