The mission, Crew-11, is more than just a routine flight to the International Space Station (ISS). It carries the World Seeds Payload, a collaborative agricultural science experiment led by Jaguar Space in partnership with 11 nations, including Nigeria.

Indigenous Crops Take Flight

Nigeria’s contribution to this pioneering mission? A carefully curated selection of six indigenous crop seeds:

• Okra
• Cowpea
• Guinea corn (sorghum)
• Amaranth
• Maize
• Melon

Chosen for their nutritional value, cultural heritage, and agricultural resilience, these seeds are headed to space for one extraordinary reason: to be studied under microgravity conditions aboard the ISS.

The goal? To understand how spaceflight affects seed structure, viability, and growth potential, critical knowledge in the quest for climate-smart agriculture, global food security, and possibly, farming in space.

A Mission Years in the Making

At the heart of Nigeria’s role in this mission is Olayinka Fagbemiro, Assistant Director of NASRDA’s International Cooperation & Linkages Department, and Nigeria’s Project Lead for the initiative.

From the painstaking seed selection to international logistics and agency representation, Fagbemiro has been instrumental in steering Nigeria’s involvement, from vision to launch pad.

The seeds made their way to the United States after NASRDA and Jaguar Space formalized their collaboration through a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), further cementing Nigeria’s place in global scientific dialogue.

Nigeria’s First Biological Payload in Space

This mission marks a historic first for NASRDA: the first time a biological payload from Nigeria will fly on a crewed NASA mission to the ISS. But beyond headlines, it validates years of research by NASRDA’s Department of Physical and Life Sciences, which has long studied similar crops in simulated gravity environments here on Earth.

Now, those theories are headed for real-world testing, 250 miles above ground.

Science Rooted in Culture, Growing in Space

The World Seeds Payload is not just a technical experiment, it’s a symbol of inclusive, culturally grounded space science.

It underscores how emerging space nations like Nigeria can shape humanity’s future in space, using tools and knowledge rooted in local heritage.

As NASRDA’s seeds float in microgravity alongside cutting-edge global experiments, they carry with them the dreams of a continent, where tradition meets innovation, and where African crops may one day feed interplanetary missions.

*Follow Techeconomy for more stories on Nigeria’s growing role in space science, agri-tech, and digital transformation.

He stated this when sharing his thoughts in the just concluded first edition of the Techeconomy Business Series.

According to him, 60-70% of the people who are gainfully employed in the developed countries are employed by the private sector.

Although the government had to implement infrastructural facilities, entrepreneurs and business owners drive the economy through the instrumentation of Technology.

“The same way construction is taking care of unemployment in the country technology can also guarantee good jobs and put food on their tables. We should not mean things up if you go to the Western world where things are working the government only makes the environment conducive, most especially in the aspect of helping them with the infrastructure, building tech hubs, and sometimes exemptions from taxes from the equipment.

“It is the entrepreneurs. The business owners that drive the economy if you go to the United States of America today, you will discover that about 60-70% of the people that are gainfully employed are in the private sector. This needs to be encouraged in Nigeria so that we can ease the pressure on the government. The Nigerian government should not go into the business of Technology they should encourage people like Hillary and other ‘Tech Guys’ to take care of the sector while they just make the environment conducive.

According to Statista, the unemployment rate in Nigeria is forecast to be 4.52% in 2024, while unemployed people in Nigeria are forecast to be 3.54m in 2024.

The employment rate in Nigeria is forecast to be 82.02% in 2024 and the total labour force in Nigeria is forecasted to be 78.14m in 2024.

Similarly, in the latest report from the National Bureau of Statistics, in urban areas, the unemployment rate remained unchanged at 6.0%, while rural unemployment stood at 4.3%.

“The unemployment rate increased to 5.3 percent in the first quarter of 2024 from 5.0% in Q3 2023.

“The unemployment rate among males was 4.3 percent and 6.2% among females. The unemployment rate in urban areas was 6.0 percent in Q1 2024, the same in Q3 2023,” the NBS report read.

Speaking further, he noted that the Federal Government of Nigeria is trying its best to ameliorate the many challenges, but Nigeria needs her own Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and entrepreneurs to take center stage thereby driving the economy.

“The government is trying its best because they have a lot of space to cope with, and  When you are talking about the government, you are talking about the neck that is carrying the head. We are about  250 million in Nigeria, though the last census capped our population at around 220 million. You and I know that we are more than 220 million. We are around  250 million people in Nigeria, so for a single government to take care of these numbers of people it’s a whole lot and it’s telling on them. You must give it to them, because in their little way.

“But, if you look at the developed country, you can see today that entrepreneurs drive the technology aspect of their economy. The United States of America can be called a leading nation today with all the huge investments that the government made in their space exploration, as we speak today, the United States of America still relies heavily on Indian individuals like Elon Musk to drive their technology advancement.

“If you recall, sometime in July, NASA sent some people to Space and they were trapped in Space, it was Elon Musk through Space X that is putting in the work to bring those trapped in Space back into the earth.

Oluwabusayo spoke glowingly of the giant strides of Nigerian entrepreneurs in the Fintech industry and challenged budding entrepreneurs and builders to look inward.

I think we are very good at current financial technology, you also mentioned Vesti that are also doing well in Fintech and global mobilization. They have this platform where they can help you if you want to study abroad and assist you in getting admission. If we want to take advantage of the “tech” like I submitted earlier… our government has a lot to cope with and if you look inward you will discover that a lot of us like the Estate I live in Lagos do not have light and we are on the verge of sorting it out. So we need to look inward.

“If people are well informed about the possibilities, Mark Zuckerberg has visited Nigeria several times, Bill Gates has been in Nigeria, but I am not sure if Elon Musk has come to visit. These are people who have seen opportunities.

“Nigeria, has, maybe the highest number of productive youth, if we look at the people from Ages 18-35 those are the people that form about 60% of the population you can imagine the opportunities that lie ahead of us if the information is out there, if we can get people educated, if the government can make the environment conducive, fix the power problem so that the little we have we are not using it to generate to power this sector. I think these are the list that the government can do to create jobs in this particular sector”, he added.

A month after the fiery failure of another Intuitive Machines’ Nova-C lander launched atop a Falcon 9 rocket from Elon Musk’s firm SpaceX at 1:05 am EST from Cape Canaveral at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, NASA said.

The mission, called IM-1, had been slated to launch before dawn on Valentine’s Day but was delayed due to a methane fuel issue.

The Nova-C lander, called Odysseus and nicknamed Odie, separated from SpaceX’s Falcon 9 at approximately 1:53 am EST, NASA confirmed in a statement.

The lander is now on a direct trajectory to the moon, where it will enter into lunar orbit and attempt to land around the moon’s south pole region.

The attempt is expected to take place around February 22.The IM-1 launch was streamed on NASA’s websites, social media channels and NASA TV, with Intuitive Machines and SpaceX also streaming the launch on their respective websites and social media.

Odysseus is hoping to carry a variety of items to the moon. Its payload includes an array of equipment and science experiments for NASA, which the company will reportedly be paid $118 million to deliver.

Odie is also carrying a series of sculptures by artist Jeff Koons, part of an NFT crypto project, and material developed to insulate the lander developed by clothing maker Columbia Sportswear.

Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic Technology failed in its attempt to land its Peregrine lunar lander on the moon’s surface in January following a catastrophic fuel leak shortly after takeoff.

Rather than let Peregrine drift in space, enter orbit or crash into the moon, the company had it return to Earth, where it burned up in the atmosphere upon reentry.

Peregrine, along with the IM-1 mission, is part of NASA’s effort to grow the emerging space economy and build commercial partners to facilitate further exploration.

The pair form the first of numerous lunar missions planned as part of this public-private partnership, which NASA calls the Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program.

In the long term, the agency hopes the program will bring down costs for its own missions and facilitate two lunar deliveries each year.

It has earmarked $2.6 billion in funding for contracts through 2028, for which 14 American companies have been selected to bid for contracts, including Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Lockheed Martin Space.

[Featured Image Credit]

This includes IBM’s geospatial foundation model developed in collaboration with NASA, to climate efforts including analysis of urban heat islands in the United Arab Emirates (UAE); reforestation across Kenya; and climate resiliency in the United Kingdom (UK).

IBM continues to advance its AI model strategy in part through the creation, training, fine-tuning and open-sourcing of foundation models – models that can be used for different tasks and apply information from one situation to another – designed for domains beyond natural language, including geospatial applications.

These models, which are trained on geospatial information such as satellite images, present a unique opportunity to address climate change because unlike traditional AI models tailored for specialized tasks, geospatial foundation models – encompassing satellite and weather data – create knowledge representations from petabytes and exabytes of climate-relevant data that can facilitate accelerated and streamlined discovery of environmental insights and solutions.

These models can also be fine-tuned and applied across a multitude of areas driving or revealing climate change, from flood detection to fire scars.

“Climate change is a real and pressing issue that we must find new ways to address as quickly and efficiently as possible, including through today’s most advanced AI technologies,” said Alessandro Curioni, IBM Fellow and Vice President, Accelerated Discovery at IBM. “AI foundation models utilizing geospatial data can be a game-changer because they allow us to better understand, prepare and address the many climate-related events effecting the health of our planet in a manner and speed never before seen. We are hopeful these technologies can help accelerate the rate at which we derive and apply solutions for a safer and healthier planet for future generations.”

Analyzing urban heat islands in the UAE

By the end of this century, many cities will likely experience disruptive and excessive heat waves if GHG emissions continue at high levels. To develop sustainable and equitable plans to keep cities habitable, the rising heat levels must be accurately mapped and addressed.

IBM and the Mohamed Bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI) are pioneering an attempt to apply foundation models to the mapping of urban heat islands – areas with significantly higher temperatures compared to surrounding locations.

This innovative research specifically applies a fine-tuned version of IBM’s geospatial foundation model to understand the urban environment in Abu Dhabi and how the underlying landscape in the UAE impacts the formation of urban heat islands.

To date, the model has informed efforts that have succeeded in a reduction of heat island effects in the region by more than 3^oC (5.4 F). Going forward, the model is expected to continue to provide unique insights that inform the development of urban design strategies designed to help reduce urban heat stress in changing climates.

Professor Tim Baldwin, MBZUAI Acting Provost, said:

“Our collaboration with IBM marks a groundbreaking effort to utilize foundational AI models in analyzing and identifying solutions to urban heat islands for Abu Dhabi and parts of the UAE, a region which is particularly affected by climate change. This research underscores the vital role of AI in tackling global issues, emphasizing the urgency of continued exploration and innovation. By harnessing the power of AI, we are not merely addressing challenges; we are proactively shaping solutions for a sustainable future. In a world confronted by unprecedented challenges, MBZUAI stands at the forefront of pioneering research in AI, recognizing the transformative power it holds.”

Advancing reforestation and water sustainability in Kenya

In December 2022, President of Kenya H.E. D.R William Ruto unveiled the National Tree Growing and Restoration Campaign designed to plant 15 billion trees across Kenya by 2032, including in areas of critically affected water towers – forested landscapes that retain water and source many rivers throughout Kenya. While water towers account for about three quarters of the nation’s water resources, deforestation is contributing to increasing water scarcity in these regions.

IBM and the Kenyan government’s office of the Special Envoy for Climate Change Ali Mohamed have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to support the National Tree Growing and Restoration Campaign through a new “adopt-a-water-tower” initiative.

The effort will be fueled by a new digital platform that leverages IBM’s geospatial foundation model to enable users to track and visualize tree planting and tree growing activities in specific water tower areas.

Local developers can also create fine-tuned models combining the IBM geospatial model with their own localized information to monitor forest restoration and measure above-ground biomass such as sequestered carbon, ultimately mobilizing on-the-ground efforts to plant more trees across Kenya’s water tower regions.

The President’s Spokesperson, Mr. Hussein Mohamed, MBS, said:

“We recognize that technology plays a pivotal role in unlocking our full potential, optimizing resource utilization, and seizing opportunities. It serves as a means to ensure that we harness our resources most effectively to drive our grassroots-driven economic transformation agenda. Through our partnership with IBM, we have the capability of harnessing the power of artificial intelligence and geospatial data to advance our climate ambitions. These ambitions include planting 15 billion trees, rejuvenating our vital water towers, fostering increased collaboration with the private sector to promote a just energy transition for communities around our forests. Simultaneously, this collaboration will enhance our capacity to equitably participate in the carbon economy. The potential of this collaboration extends beyond our borders and has the capacity to be replicated in other nations seeking to enhance their forest cover while also improving the economic and health well-being of their communities.”

Elevating climate resiliency across the United Kingdom

In 2021, IBM and the Science and Technology Facilities Council’s (STFC) Hartree Centre collaborated to explore the application of next-generation technologies including AI from IBM to address climate risk and resiliency across the UK.

Now, IBM, STFC and Royal HaskoningDHV, a global consulting engineering company, have collaborated to establish a new service, leveraging IBM’s geospatial AI tools, that seeks to automate and scale climate risk assessment processes for organizations. The service’s first use case will focus on the aviation sector, in which IBM’s geospatial AI will assess impacts weather-related issues, including:

• Short-term impact of extreme weather on aviation operations.
• Long-term impact of climate change on future airport operations and infrastructure.

In addition, IBM and STFC Hartree Centre, through the Hartree National Centre for Digital Innovation, are advancing a new area of research with Dark Matter Labs and Lucidminds, as part of their TreesAI project. The research project will apply IBM geospatial AI technologies to their Green Urban Scenarios (GUS) model to map urban locations where trees can be planted to help alleviate the risk of surface water flooding. The effort will eventually inform an end-to-end digital planning platform for urban planners, project developers and green urban investors across the UK.

Kate Royse, Director at STFC’s Hartree Centre, said: “There has never been a more important time to prepare for the challenges posed by climate change, both from an industrial and societal perspective. Here at STFC’s Hartree Centre we’re excited to be working with IBM and Royal HaskoningDHV, using advanced AI technologies to help the aviation industry prepare for climate risks, and become more resilient against the effects of extreme weather. Equally, our collaboration with IBM and Dark Matter Labs on the TreesAI project through our HNCDI programme will enable smarter decisions based on accurately predicting and managing flood risk, which is critical to all future city planning. Advanced AI technologies are key driver in enabling us to build a more resilient world against the adverse impacts of climate change.”

Djeevan Schiferli, Climate Intelligence Business Strategist, Royal HaskoningDHV said:

“Operational and strategic planners in every company require a clear understanding of how weather and climate-related incidents affect their business operations. By harnessing AI and geospatial data, we will super charge our climate risk assessments on a global scale.”

Chloe Treger, TreesAI UK Lead, has this to say: 

“Over 300,000 properties are at risk of surface-water flooding. Without action, this figure is set to almost double by 2055 due to climate change and urbanisation. Through our collaboration with IBM and STFC, we have been able to observe how trees contribute to reducing surface water flooding risks across the city under different scenarios, using GUS. This has enabled us and our partners to make the business case for tree planting and maintenance. After a successful pilot in Glasgow, we are now looking for further locations to embed this powerful data-enabled decision-making tool.”

Extending NASA collaboration to apply generative AI to weather

Beyond their initial commitment to build and deploy a geospatial foundation model, IBM and NASA have also announced work on a new, separate AI foundation model for weather and climate.

By applying AI technology from IBM, the model aims to improve the accuracy, speed and affordability of weather forecasting and other climate applications. Sample applications of the model not only include forecasting, but also super-resolution downscaling, identifying conditions conducive to wildfires, and predicting meteorological phenomena.

IBM researchers will work alongside NASA domain experts to train and validate the model.

These latest efforts and IBM’s role at COP28 builds on the company’s long history of action, research, and advocacy around the environment. 

The joint work will apply AI foundation model technology to NASA’s Earth-observing satellite data for the first time.

Foundation models are types of AI models that are trained on a broad set of unlabeled data, can be used for different tasks, and can apply information about one situation to another.

These models have rapidly advanced the field of natural language processing (NLP) technology over the last five years, and IBM is pioneering applications of foundation models beyond language.

Earth observations that allow scientists to study and monitor our planet are being gathered at unprecedented rates and volume. New and innovative approaches are required to extract knowledge from these vast data resources.

The goal of this work is to provide an easier way for researchers to analyze and draw insights from these large datasets. IBM’s foundation model technology has the potential to speed up the discovery and analysis of these data in order to quickly advance the scientific understanding of Earth and response to climate-related issues.

ALSO READ: Zipline Targets Two Million Instant Deliveries across Rwanda by 2029

IBM and NASA plan to develop several new technologies to extract insights from Earth observations. One project will train an IBM geospatial intelligence foundation model on NASA’s Harmonized Landsat Sentinel-2 (HLS) dataset, a record of land cover and land use changes captured by Earth-orbiting satellites.

By analyzing petabytes of satellite data to identify changes in the geographic footprint of phenomena such as natural disasters, cyclical crop yields, and wildlife habitats, this foundation model technology will help researchers provide critical analysis of our planet’s environmental systems.

Another output from this collaboration is expected to be an easily searchable corpus of Earth science literature. IBM has developed an NLP model trained on nearly 300,000 Earth science journal articles to organize the literature and make it easier to discover new knowledge. Containing one of the largest AI workloads trained on Red Hat’s OpenShift software to date, the fully trained model uses PrimeQA, IBM’s open-source multilingual question-answering system. Beyond providing a resource to researchers, the new language model for Earth science could be infused into NASA’s scientific data management and stewardship processes.

“The beauty of foundation models is they can potentially be used for many downstream applications,” said Rahul Ramachandran, senior research scientist at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. “Building these foundation models cannot be tackled by small teams,” he added. “You need teams across different organizations to bring their different perspectives, resources, and skill sets.”

“Foundation models have proven successful in natural language processing, and it’s time to expand that to new domains and modalities important for business and society,” said Raghu Ganti, principal researcher at IBM. “Applying foundation models to geospatial, event-sequence, time-series, and other non-language factors within Earth science data could make enormously valuable insights and information suddenly available to a much wider group of researchers, businesses, and citizens. Ultimately, it could facilitate a larger number of people working on some of our most pressing climate issues.”

Other potential IBM-NASA joint projects in this agreement include constructing a foundation model for weather and climate prediction using MERRA-2, a dataset of atmospheric observations. This collaboration is part of NASA’s Open-Source Science Initiative, a commitment to building an inclusive, transparent, and collaborative open science community over the next decade.

Zipline is drawing upon space data to expand its aerial logistics services to more government sectors in Rwanda, including the health, agriculture, finance, e-commerce and tourism divisions, and will conduct nearly two million instant deliveries across Rwanda by 2029.

This was contained in a Whitehouse statement issued on the sidelines of U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit which featured the first-ever U.S.-Africa Space Forum.

The Forum reaffirmed the United States’ commitment to collaborating with African partners on the peaceful use and exploration of outer space to meet shared priorities for here on Earth.

The Forum highlighted the U.S.-Africa space partnership and cooperation to address 21st century challenges and opportunities, including responding to the climate, biodiversity, and global food crises; promoting responsible behavior in outer space; and reinforcing U.S.-African scientific and commercial space cooperation.

Participants in the Forum committed to deepening the U.S.-Africa space partnership across all sectors.

The Forum celebrated the signing of the Artemis Accords by Nigeria and Rwanda, making them the first African signatories.

The Artemis Accords are a set of principles to guide the next phase in space exploration, reinforcing and providing for important operational implementation of key obligations in the 1967 Outer Space Treaty.

The Accords affirm the importance of implementing best practices and norms of responsible behavior as well as compliance with the Registration Convention and the Rescue and Return Agreement.

Professor Isa Ali Ibrahim, Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, signed the Artemis Accords on behalf of Nigeria, while Francis Ngabo, CEO of Rwanda Space Agency, signed the Accords on behalf of Rwanda.

They were joined on the U.S. side by Assistant Secretary of State Monica Medina, Administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), Bill Nelson, and Executive Secretary of the National Space Council, Chirag Parikh.

With their signatures, 23 nations have signed the Artemis Accords.

The Forum also discussed the role of the private sector in supporting U.S.-Africa space partnership.  A number of U.S. companies have recently announced new investments in the U.S.-Africa partnership, including:

“The Rwanda Space Agency and ATLAS Space Operations have partnered to bring a teleport and large satellite antenna to the global space community.

“Planet Labs PBC is investing across Africa with a range of stakeholders to deliver daily satellite imagery and geospatial solutions that help meet sustainability, economic, and resource management priorities, including supporting decision making on drought risk protection, forest management, and renewable energy.  Kenyan company ZEP-RE just announced that it will use Planet’s satellite imagery as it works with the World Bank on drought risk protection in the Horn of Africa.

“In furtherance of Nigeria’s goal of providing all of its citizens broadband access by 2025, Nigeria announced that SpaceX’s high-speed, low latency broadband service Starlink is now available in the country, making Nigeria the first country in Africa where Starlink is available.

“Zipline is drawing upon space data to expand its aerial logistics services to more government sectors in Rwanda, including the health, agriculture, finance, e-commerce and tourism divisions, and will conduct nearly two million instant deliveries across Rwanda by 2029”, the Whitehouse statement reads.

Source