Nigeria, Rwanda sign Artemis Accords

This week, during the inaugural U.S.-Africa Space Forum, Nigeria and Rwanda became the first countries in Africa to formally sign the Artemis Accords.

The Artemis Accords are a comprehensive, non-binding framework that establishes guidelines for responsible, peaceful, and multinational lunar exploration. On the first day of the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit in Washington, DC (Dec. 13–Dec. 15), of which the inaugural space forum was a part, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson announced the inclusion of Nigeria and Rwanda in this agreement.

Later, the United States State Department released a statement(opens in new tab) to mark the agreement's inclusion of Nigeria and Rwanda.

The United States State Department later issued a statement(opens in new tab) commemorating the addition of Nigeria and Rwanda to the agreement. "Nigeria and Rwanda became the first African nations to sign the Artemis Accords. Participants in the Forum, which was part of the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit, discussed how to further shared goals through the peaceful exploration and use of outer space," the statement reads.

According to the announcement, the Accords were signed by Rwanda Space Agency CEO Francis Ngabo on behalf of the Republic of Rwanda and Minister of Communications and Digital Economy Isa Ali Ibrahim on behalf of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

"Signatories commit to principles to guide their civil space activities, including the public release of scientific data, responsible debris mitigation, registration of space objects, and the establishment and implementation of interoperability standards," the State Department's statement continues.

The joint launch of the Artemis Accords by NASA and the U.S. State Department in 2020, along with eight other nations, had as its stated goal the advancement of bilateral and multilateral space cooperation between signatories. With the addition of Nigeria and Rwanda to the Moon Coalition, there are now 23 nations that have ratified the Accords, a set of guidelines and best practices for exploration.

The Artemis program of NASA, which seeks to establish a long-term human presence on and around the moon by the end of the 2020s, serves as the source of inspiration for the name of the Accords.

The United States, Australia, Canada, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Ukraine, the United Kingdom, and the United Arab Emirates were the first nations to join up; South Korea would be the first of many nations to do so during the Biden administration. Russia and China, among other countries, have contended that the accords are excessively US-centric and amount to the US and its allies power grab.

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