The Independent Uganda: You get the Truth we Pay the Price
From Kyankwanzi to the Moon and beyond: Another case for Regional Integration and Shared Ambition
COMMENT | ANDREW PI BESI | Sometime in 2023, I found myself on a panel at the Kampala Geopolitics Conference, convened by the French Embassy and Konrad Adenauer Stiftung–Uganda in partnership with Makerere University. It was one of those rare invitations I had quietly hoped for, not for the prestige it brings but solely for the opportunity to engage in serious conversation on Africa’s geopolitical maneuverings.
The theme, “The Geopolitics of Space,” moderated by Dr. Korir Singoei, was a timely choice, not least because space has transformed from the realm of dreamers into the arena of hard power.
On stage, to the mild amusement of students and faculty, I suggested that within 10 to 30 years, the United States, China, India, the European Union, and perhaps Russia and Japan would establish permanent or semi-permanent bases on the Moon. These bases would be designed and built as instruments of strategy: research hubs, logistical nodes, and ultimately, extensions of national power.
For emphasis, I cited the example of agriculture. What would happen to our agricultural sector if one quarter of the moon were harnessed into a giant agricultural farm? Indeed, beneath the surface of these ambitions lies a question both simple and profound: can humanity sustain life beyond Earth? Can we transplant civilisation itself?
It is at this point that Africa must pause and reflect, because while others design systems for survival in the vastness of space, we have struggled to organise ourselves within the abundance of Earth.
In the more than six decades since independence, too many of our states have drifted into a pattern where politics is less about transformation and more about preservation of power, of privilege, of narrow interests. The result has been a continent rich in promise, yet always constrained by the limits of its own political imagination.
The Democratic Republic of Congo stands as one of the most tragic illustrations. The assassination of Patrice Lumumba, amid Cold War intrigue and the complicity of Mobutu, did not merely remove a leader; it derailed the possibility of a coherent national project. What followed has been decades of instability, leaving the eastern regions mired in cycles of armed conflict that have denied not only Congo, but the wider Great Lakes region, the dividends of peace and economic integration.
Across Central Africa, long-serving regimes in Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, the Central African Republic, etc., have refined the art of political endurance, often at the expense of institutional renewal. In the Sudans, the failure of politics to evolve into stable civic systems has given way to violent contestation.
And yet, Africa is not without its counter-narratives. Rwanda, perhaps because of the April 1994 genocide, has demonstrated what disciplined state-building can achieve. Botswana, thanks to the foresight of its first president, Sir Seretse Khama, offers an even older lesson: that natural resources, when treated as national assets rather than personal spoils, can underpin decades of stability and growth.
In stark contrast, Somalia’s early promise dissolved into fragmentation, as the erosion of national institutions gave way to clan-based political logic. The lesson is as clear as it is uncomfortable: nations are not sustained by identity alone, but by the institutions that give that identity meaning.
It is in this context that one recalls the recent, characteristically blunt observation by President Museveni, who, at an NRM retreat to Kyankwanzi, contrasted America’s pursuit of the Artemis II mission with our own political preoccupations. While others invest in science, technology, and the conquest of new frontiers, we gather in Kyankwanzi, not to design the future, but to rehearse consensus, affirm loyalty, and perfect the choreography of applause. It was a remark delivered with humour, but carrying the weight of an inconvenient truth.
However, if there is a glimmer of strategic coherence on the continent, it lies in the slow, imperfect, but undeniable progress of regional integration; most notably within the East African Community. What began as a modest effort at cooperation has evolved into one of Africa’s most promising experiments in shared destiny. The expansion of its membership, the steady harmonisation of trade policies, the push toward a common market, and ongoing conversations around monetary union all point to a recognition that scale matters. Infrastructure corridors now link ports to hinterlands; people, goods, and ideas move with increasing fluidity; and a regional consciousness, however nascent, is beginning to take root. The East African Community is not yet the finished article, but it is, perhaps, the clearest cynosure of what Africa can become when it chooses integration over fragmentation.
For it is only at scale that ambition becomes feasible. No single African state, acting alone, can marshal the resources, technology, or institutional depth required to compete in an era defined by lunar missions and space-based economies. But a continent that integrates economically, politically, and intellectually can begin to imagine, and then to pursue projects of similar magnitude.
And so we return to the contrast that frames this reflection.
On one hand, a retreat in Kyankwanzi – familiar, performative, grounded in the rituals of political continuity. On the other hand, a mission to the Moon is precise, forward-looking, grounded in science and long-term vision.
The question is not whether Africa can build rockets or establish lunar bases. The question is whether we can first build the political, economic, and institutional architecture that makes such ambitions conceivable.
Because in the end, the distance between Kyankwanzi and the Moon is not measured in kilometres. It is measured in vision.
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By Andrew “Pi” Besi | On X: @BesiAndrew
