Nairobi, November 17- Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni has sparked renewed debate after making unusual comments about the moon and outer space.
Speaking during a public address, Museveni linked space exploration to global power and urged African nations to build stronger technological capabilities. He insisted that space should be seen as a shared resource, not something dominated by a few powerful countries.
“That space is common property for all of us. The moon is ours too, yet we are absent and unaware of what’s happening there,” he said. He warned that countries with established space programmes enjoy significant geopolitical advantages and may look down on those without one.
Museveni claimed that nations in Europe, Asia and the Americas such as Russia, China and India already have a presence on the moon. He suggested they may view Africa as insignificant, saying they could “spray insecticide and wipe us out.”
He urged Uganda to invest in space technology so it can monitor what other nations are doing on the moon, which he again described as a shared resource. “We need to go to space and ask what they are doing there. This moon belongs to us as well,” he said.
Museveni also criticised Africa’s absence from global space efforts. “No African country has a space programme. This is dangerous. It’s the same old gunpowder problem. Even as our individual countries grow, we cannot run space programmes alone,” he said.
He argued that regional cooperation may be the answer, adding that East African nations need to reach similar technological levels to protect their sovereignty. He framed this as another reason to push for deeper political integration in the region.
These remarks follow another contentious statement in which Museveni claimed the Indian Ocean belongs to all nations. He suggested landlocked countries like Uganda should never be barred from accessing it and even hinted at potential future disputes with Kenya over the port of Mombasa, insisting that shared resources should not be reserved only for coastal states.
