OBS: Despite Millions Of Africans Living In Extreme Poverty, Governments Are Spending Billions On Space Programmes | Where Lies Our Priority?

Call me naïve but I still find it difficult to establish our priorities as a continent with millions of people living in extreme poverty. Despite the fact that poverty in Africa keeps getting worse, several African governments are spending huge sums on space programmes.

How will going to Space or sending a satellite solve the very immediate poverty problems we have in Ghana and other African countries?

If you care to know, in the next 5 years, Ghana, Kenya, Uganda and South Africa will receive a total of £1.5billion from British taxpayers for space related expenditure.

Why can’t we tackle the most important issues we have today in Africa and leave the rich countries to play their space games and engage in their space race…

According to MailOnline;

Four other African countries in receipt of hundreds of millions of pounds in British aid have their own space programmes, the Mail can reveal.

The row over aid spending intensified yesterday when it emerged Britain is pumping more than a billion pounds into oil-rich Nigeria which has plans to put a man in space.

But taxpayers are also funding aid programmes in South Africa, Ghana, Uganda and Kenya – all of which have their own space agencies. Many are in their early stages, but include ambitious and expensive plans for satellites and even rockets.

Over the five years of this Government, the four nations will receive more than £1.5billion from British taxpayers.

Kenya will be handed the most, a total of £596million, followed by Uganda which is getting £480million. Ghana will receive £460million.

South Africa will be given £112million – almost as much as it spends on its space programme. The long-standing project  is estimated to cost some £110million  a year.

In May ministers announced direct aid to South Africa would end in 2015. International Development Secretary Justine Greening said it was now the region’s ‘economic powerhouse’ and was ‘in a position to fund its own development’. But until then it will still be handed some £19million a year.

The South African National Space Agency was founded in 2009 – the same year that the first South African government-owned satellite was launched on a Russian rocket.

It cost an estimated £1.7million and collects images for agriculture, water management and urban planning.

Kenya’s space agency was set up last year and the country’s politicians have made clear their intentions to get a satellite into space.

Uganda also has a space research programme, paid for in part by its government, and plans for a satellite and rocket.

Ghana’s Space Science and Technology Centre is thought to be several years away from putting a satellite into space.

The revelations will intensify pressure on ministers over Britain’s spiralling aid spending. The Department for International Development’s budget will rise by 35 per cent in real terms by 2015, at  the same time as spending on areas of critical national importance such as the police, military and immigration is being slashed.

Britain is also handing about £280million a year in aid to India, another country with its own space programme.

The row was sparked by comments from UKIP MEP Godfrey Bloom who said it was folly to give billions in aid to ‘Bongo Bongo land’.

He was widely criticised for using the term ‘Bongo Bongo land’ but many commentators believe he was right about the building resentment over foreign aid.

He said: ‘How we can possibly be giving a billion pounds a month, when we’re in this sort of debt, to Bongo Bongo land is completely beyond me.’

And he claimed foreign leaders frittered aid money away on ‘Ray-Ban sunglasses, apartments in Paris and Ferraris’.

On Thursday David Cameron said the remarks were offensive and accused Mr Bloom of being guilty of a ‘stop the world I want to get off’ approach to foreign aid.

But the revelations that oil-rich Nigeria, which is receiving £300million in British aid this year alone, had ambitious plans to launch its own rockets sparked fury.

Critics asked why Britain was, in effect, subsidising a space programme for a nation where 70 per cent of people live below the poverty line.

Backbench Tory MP Philip Davies said it was ‘totally unjustifiable and unaffordable’ for Britain to give this money to Nigeria, given the scale of its ‘grandiose’ space programme.

But the Department for International Development has defended its aid spending, saying the money goes to poverty reduction, health and education programmes, and would benefit Britain by cutting immigration and crime.