Africas

South African Lhuan-dre Pretorius hit 50 in 24 balls, needed 16 more to reach 100 and took another 18 to hit 150.

Lhuan-dre Pretorius hit 188 not out off 79 deliveries in Bloemfontein to break Chris Gayle’s record score in the T20 format.

Playing for the Titans against the Knights in the South African CSA Challenge, the 20-year-old left-hander opened the batting and hit 13 sixes and 14 fours in his innings to surpass Gayle’s 175 for Bengaluru in the Indian Premier League in 2013.

Pretorius reached 50 in 24 balls, needed 16 more to get to his century and took another 18 to hit 150.

Gayle scored his 175 off 66 balls, striking 17 sixes and 13 fours.

The 20-year-old has represented South Africa in all three international formats. He was making his first Titans appearance of the season after scoring 226 total runs, tied for most with Dewald Brevis, in a three-nation series in Namibia in September.

On Friday, he dominated the strike, facing the equivalent of more than 13 overs to tie Australians Aaron Finch and Marcus Stoinis for the most balls faced in a T20 innings.

The second-highest scorer was Sinethemba Qeshile with 14 as the Titans finished on 267-3.

They then bowled out the Knights for 143 to win by 124 runs.

The Titans total was the second-highest in the competition’s history, behind their 271 also against the Kings in 2022. In that match, Brevis hit 162, until Friday, a competition record. This time he made seven.

The Cricinfo website calculated that in 91 T20 games, Pretorius has a strike rate of 150.44.

Accra, Ghana – The Africa Space Expo (ASPEX), which closed in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, last week, was not designed as a showcase for rockets and astronauts. Organisers presented it instead as a marketplace for space applications in food security, climate resilience, territorial monitoring, connectivity and maritime security, bringing start-ups, project labs and investors together to move ideas from demonstration to deployment.

The event also produced several concrete agreements. The Ivory Coast signed the Artemis Accords, becoming the 75th signatory of the agreement on space exploration and development, while Angola signed a letter of intent on space cooperation with the United Arab Emirates.

But beyond the agreements, the expo highlighted a question that is becoming harder to avoid: Can Africa move from using space technology to building more of it itself?

Ghana offers a clear illustration of both the progress and the gap.

Ghana’s ambitions in space and nuclear science date back to its early years of independence. In 1961, President Kwame Nkrumah’s government initiated a nuclear reactor project in Accra. Two years later, the government established the Ghana Atomic Energy Commission through an act of Parliament with a mandate covering the peaceful applications of nuclear energy.

The reactor project was shelved after Nkrumah was overthrown in 1966, but the institution he helped establish remains the parent body of the Ghana Space Science and Technology Institute (GSSTI).

Joseph Tandoh, director of the GSSTI, traces Ghana’s more recent space programme to a partnership with South Africa.

“Ghana became a partner through South Africa,” he told Al Jazeera. “Through that project, we were able to reconstruct the old satellite antenna at Kuntunse into a radio telescope.”

Through its partnership with South Africa on radio astronomy, Ghana converted a redundant 32-metre (105ft) antenna at Kuntunse into a functioning radio telescope. Ghana became the first of South Africa’s eight African Square Kilometre Array partner countries to complete the conversion, and the telescope was launched in August 2017.

Ghana’s National Space Policy was approved by the cabinet in 2022 and launched in 2024. The government approved the establishment of a Ghana Space Agency in 2025, beginning the process of creating a dedicated national institution for the sector.

The institutional framework is taking shape. The harder question is how Ghana moves from using space technology to developing and building more of it itself.

What Ghana is already doing

At the GSSTI, that transition is already under way.

Tandoh told Al Jazeera GEOMAIZE, a partnership between the GSSTI and VITO, the Flemish Institute for Technological Research in Belgium, has demonstrated how satellite data can be applied to Ghanaian agriculture.

The project monitored crop health and developed algorithms to classify crops. Ghana is also expanding its use of Earth observation data and artificial intelligence for crop monitoring and yield prediction.

But predicting yields has proved more difficult. Tandoh said the model’s accuracy fell short of expectations, largely because many Ghanaian farmers practise smallholder mixed cropping and satellite soil-moisture data are too coarse to capture differences between small farms.

A follow-up project supported by the French embassy and international research partners, is now working to improve the estimates.

The GSSTI has also used satellite data to track forest loss linked to mining and is working with partners in Nigeria on a digital twin to simulate coastal erosion at Keta and Agavedzi. Japanese cooperation has provided technical training while the French government supported work on space legislation that produced a draft now being reviewed by the attorney general.

“We always say that Ghana Space Science and Technology Institute becoming an agency is to position Ghana in a way that we will not only be users of the technology but we will also contribute to designing, developing and building our own tools,” Tandoh said.

The funding wall

Victor Tagborloh founded Galaxy Aerospace Ghana in 2020. Two years later, his team launched a high-altitude balloon into near space, capturing images of Ghana’s geography with clearance from national security and airport authorities.

The company has since designed mini-rockets for the GSSTI, trained young people in space robotics and artificial intelligence and pushed for the introduction of Starlink in Ghana in 2024.

But Tagborloh said the company has yet to secure an investor, six years after it was founded.

Galaxy’s longer-term plans include a space university on 33,000 hectares (82,000 acres) that it has secured at Apam in Ghana’s Central Region as well as a ground station that would give the country greater capacity to monitor floods, mining activity and coastal erosion.

The company is seeking investors for the ground station and a geospatial intelligence platform. Tagborloh said the curriculum is ready and the land is available. What is missing is the capital to turn those plans into infrastructure.

He also argued that Ghana’s position near the equator could provide an advantage for launching spacecraft, potentially reducing the fuel required to reach orbit. Several other African countries share similar geography.

But Tagborloh’s ambition goes beyond launching rockets. He wants Ghana to develop more of the infrastructure and expertise needed to build its own space capabilities.

Who is building the industry?

Bright Atsu Sogbey, president of the Africa Development Council and a senior research engineer at the Ghana Atomic Energy Commission, argued that the private sector cannot build the industry alone.

“Borrowed technology cannot be sustainable,” Sogbey told Al Jazeera. “The state must be in the driver’s seat, using the natural resources we have to ensure that, in partnership with the private sector, we can have laboratories and manufacturing hubs for the space industry.”

He pointed to South Africa, Egypt and Nigeria, which have established space laboratories and manufactured test satellites. Ghana, he said, still lacks the state-backed laboratories and manufacturing hubs needed to produce more of its own components rather than importing them.

“Enough of the talk shop,” Sogbey said. “The next expo should see African satellites assembled on this continent and launching capability for African satellites.”

Engineer Daniel Aboagye, CEO of African Progressive Research and Innovations, said the change must also begin in education.

“With how technology is advancing, Africa must introduce space science into its education systems,” Aboagye told Al Jazeera. “We cannot continue to be consumers of technology we do not understand.”

Kwadwo Dwomo II, CEO of COMCENT Ghana, works on agritech systems that depend on satellite data. He also called for greater government investment in the sector.

Ghana is home to a small cluster of companies, including Galaxy Aerospace, Xavier Space Solutions and Ayeji Aerospace, working in areas such as satellite technology, Earth observation and geospatial services.

Galaxy Aerospace confirmed to Al Jazeera that it was unable to participate in this year’s expo. The company said it hopes to participate in the next expo.

A continental project

The challenge facing Ghana is shared across much of Africa: moving from using space technology to developing and building more of it locally while overcoming limited investment, infrastructure and manufacturing capacity.

ASPEX was designed in part to address that gap.

The African Space Agency, headquartered in Egypt, is intended to provide a continental framework for cooperation while the expo aims to connect investors with African start-ups, researchers and space projects.

But the distance between the ambitions presented at the expo and the resources available to engineers trying to turn them into businesses remains substantial.

For Tandoh, Ghana’s immediate priority is to build the application layer: a satellite-data processing hub capable of serving ministries across government before the country moves further into designing and launching its own satellites.

“Space cuts across all the ministries,” he told Al Jazeera. “We should be able to build and validate our own tools first.”

For Tagborloh, the timeline is more urgent.

“We shouldn’t wait for tomorrow,” he told Al Jazeera. “Whatever decision we have to take, especially for human resource capital in the space industry, it has to be now.”

Ghana has the policy. It has engineers, research institutions and companies trying to build a space industry. What it does not yet have is the capital and manufacturing capacity to turn those capabilities into a domestic industry.

“We have the team, the knowledge, the research and the technical know-how,” Tagborloh told Al Jazeera. “We just need funds.”

Abuja, Nigeria – Africa’s long-running campaign for permanent representation on the United Nations Security Council is back in focus at the 81st UN General Assembly, with leaders renewing calls to reform a body whose five permanent members have remained unchanged since 1945.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres used his final address to the General Assembly on Tuesday to renew his call for Security Council reform, saying it must become more representative and better reflect today’s geopolitical realities.

Nigeria’s Vice President Kashim Shettima, delivering President Bola Tinubu’s national statement, called for at least two permanent seats for Africa, with veto powers for as long as the veto exists, as well as five non-permanent seats for the continent.

Ghana’s President John Mahama made a similar appeal: “Security Council reform is not a favour to Africa; it is an imperative for the legitimacy, credibility and survival of the United Nations”.

The renewed calls highlight the scale of Africa’s demand. But translating them into an agreement that changes the Council’s structure remains a far more difficult task.

A reform process that has stalled

The Security Council has 15 members: five permanent members, China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States, and 10 members elected by the General Assembly for two-year terms.

The five permanent members hold veto power, allowing any one of them to block a substantive Council resolution.

No African country has a permanent seat.

Yet Africa remains central to much of the Council’s work. In 2025, the Council adopted 44 resolutions, including 24 under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, which covers measures such as sanctions and authorisations for the use of force.

Eighteen of those 24 Chapter VII resolutions concerned Africa.

For Professor Ibrahim Gambari, a former Nigerian foreign minister and former Nigerian permanent representative to the UN, the issue is not simply one of geography.

“The status quo is not really interested in change,” he told Al Jazeera. “In the appointment of the Secretary-General, you cannot be a candidate unless each of the five permanent members agrees. Therefore, we have the privilege of the unelected P5, which they don’t want to relinquish.”

Gambari said Africa’s absence was difficult to justify given the continent’s size and the amount of Security Council business involving it.

“In the case of Africa, we have a whole continent that has the largest single bloc, yet has no permanent seat on the Security Council,” he said.

The General Assembly launched the intergovernmental negotiations process on Security Council reform in 2008. The talks cover the Council’s size, membership categories, regional representation and the veto, and have continued through successive General Assembly sessions without agreement on the core questions.

Changing the Council’s permanent membership would also require an amendment to the UN Charter. Under Article 108, that requires approval by two-thirds of the General Assembly and ratification by two-thirds of UN members, including all five permanent members.

That gives the existing permanent members a formal role in any change to the system that grants them permanent membership and veto power.

Nigeria wants a permanent seat

Which African countries would eventually occupy any new permanent seats is another unresolved issue.

Nigeria has consistently presented itself as a country prepared to take on such a role. At this year’s General Assembly, the country renewed its call for at least two permanent African seats with all the rights and responsibilities of permanent membership, including the veto for as long as it exists.

Dr Fola Aina, a political scientist and international security expert at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), London, told Al Jazeera the issue also carried particular significance for Nigeria.

“Securing this position would essentially elevate Nigeria’s global diplomatic influence, give Africa a continuous voice in international security decisions and grant Nigeria the power to consolidate its position as a regional hegemon and middle power,” he said.

“The timing of Nigeria’s push is particularly strategic given the current age of strategic competition.”

Nigeria is not alone in seeking a permanent role. Egypt and South Africa have also pursued permanent representation, while other African states have expressed interest.

The African Union, however, has not selected specific countries to occupy the proposed seats. Its common position calls for at least two permanent African seats and five non-permanent seats on an expanded Council, with the AU determining which countries should represent the continent.

The veto question

Even if agreement could be reached on who should represent Africa, another obstacle would remain: the veto.

The African Union’s Ezulwini Consensus calls for any permanent African members to have the same rights and privileges as the existing permanent members, including veto power for as long as the veto remains part of the Council’s system.

African governments have therefore argued that adding permanent seats without equivalent powers would not fully address the imbalance they are seeking to correct.

That leaves two separate questions: whether the Council should expand and what powers any new permanent members would receive.

A question of influence

Gambari argues that Africa’s absence also affects the Council’s day-to-day work.

“All these peacekeeping missions in Africa are based on the mandate of the Security Council,” he said.

“The P5 assign themselves the role of penholders, which hardly allows elected non-permanent African countries to initiate draft resolutions affecting their region.”

He said the imbalance was also visible in the way Security Council missions operate on the continent.

“Even Security Council missions to Africa are not led by Africans nowadays. How can the parties in dispute have confidence in such a team?” he said.

“Even for the Security Council’s continued relevance, it has to be reformed so that Africa can have representatives in the permanent seat category.”

For Favour Aniezi, a Nigerian creative and youth advocate, the issue is also about who has influence over decisions affecting the continent.

“Beyond representation, Africa’s absence from the permanent seats of the UN Security Council is a question of whose voice gets to shape decisions that affect the continent,” she told Al Jazeera.

“As a young Nigerian woman, I think it matters that Africa is not only present when global institutions discuss our challenges but has a meaningful role in deciding how those challenges are addressed. We should not simply be represented at the table, Africa should have a voice with the weight to influence what happens at it.”

For now, the core questions remain unresolved: how many new permanent members there should be, which African countries would take the seats, whether they would receive veto power and whether the existing permanent members would accept the changes.

“As long as they keep sticking to this anachronistic formula, reforms will be hard to attain,” Gambari said.

This year, AGRA, the donor-funded agricultural development initiative formerly known as the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, is celebrating its 20th anniversary.

AGRA’s slogan is “sustainably growing Africa’s food systems”, but for years, researchers and farmers have warned that the policies it promotes are having a negative impact on African agriculture.

Our new research provides more evidence to that effect. We have documented how AGRA’s Green Revolution, with its well-funded promotion of commercial seeds, fertilisers and other inputs, has failed to spur the “productivity revolution” promised by its founders.

Worse still, its promotion of monocultures, such as maize, has led to the massive expansion of land dedicated to them. At the same time, more resilient and nutritious local crops, such as millet, are losing ground.

Funding the loss of traditional crops

Hunger continues to increase in Africa, driven by climate change, desertification, conflict and disruptions to international supply lines from international conflicts like the Ukraine war. The Green Revolution promoted by AGRA does not seem to have made much of a difference.

In countries where AGRA has had significant presence, the number of undernourished people has increased by about 60 percent – roughly the same rate as the rest of the continent.

The United Nations is calling for greater attention to “affordable healthy diets”. For Africa’s small-scale farmers, who grow what their families and communities eat, that means more, not less, crop diversity, which is the opposite of what the Green Revolution has produced.

In countries that have participated in AGRA projects, crops such as maize are promoted and funded with billions of dollars in subsidies and investment. Despite that, yields for maize have grown only modestly, just 40 percent over 18 years, well below the 100 percent improvement promised by AGRA.

Some countries, like Malawi and Ethiopia, have seen stronger yield growth for maize, but some, such as Kenya – where AGRA’s headquarters are located – have seen yields decline.

Maize production has soared across participant countries, driven mainly by the massive expansion of plantings as subsidies drive farmers to plant maize on new land.

In contrast, our research shows that traditional African staples such as sorghum, cassava, and groundnuts have lost land and investment. Since AGRA was launched in 2006, 13 countries that have participated have seen a decline in productivity of 21 percent for cassava and 10 percent for groundnuts in total.

But millet – a climate-resilient, nutritious grain – is the crop that has suffered the most. Before 2006, millet was as prevalent as maize in these countries. Since 2006, millet production has fallen 27 percent, while maize production has more than doubled. Millet yields have fallen 17 percent with the lack of investment. And as land allocated to maize production increased 71 percent, land for millet fell 12 percent.

Millet is not some backward crop waiting to be replaced by maize. For generations, it has fed communities across some of Africa’s driest regions. It can withstand heat and drought, grow with relatively few external inputs, and provide nutritious food where other crops struggle.

In 2023, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) celebrated the “Year of Millets”, highlighting the multiple benefits of the crop to the environment and social welfare.

The same is true of many of Africa’s traditional crops – sorghum, fonio, cowpeas, cassava, indigenous vegetables and many others. They are part of the biological diversity of African farming, but also of our cuisines, knowledge and cultures.

At a time of climate change, pushing such crops aside makes particularly little sense. Farmers need more options in their fields, not fewer. A diverse farm spreads risk: when one crop suffers from drought, pests or disease, another may survive. Rotation and diversity of crops help keep soils more fertile.

Valuing diversity

Rhetorically, AGRA now professes to value the very crops that its Green Revolution helped push to the margins. It speaks of diverse, nutritious and climate-adapted crops, and its seed programmes include millet, sorghum, cowpea, groundnut and others.

We welcome serious investment in these crops. It is overdue. But there is no indication that AGRA and other Green Revolution proponents will abandon their chosen monocrops, such as maize. AGRA’s current seed strategy still emphasises improved varieties, certified seeds, faster variety turnover, commercialisation and market-oriented seed systems.

Investment needs to support farmers’ rights to save, use, exchange and develop their seeds, protect crop diversity and indigenous knowledge, and ensure that farmers and communities – not seed markets alone – determine which varieties survive and spread.

African farmers do not need saving, but their crops – millet, sorghum, cowpea, fonio, and other traditional crops need to be rescued from Green Revolution crop-breeders.

When a traditional crop disappears from farmers’ fields, we can lose locally adapted seed varieties, knowledge about how to grow and prepare them and foods that are central to local diets and identities.

This is why the decline of millet should concern us far beyond the millet field. Africa is already dangerously exposed to climate shocks and volatile international food and fertiliser markets. Diversity is one of our greatest protections against those risks. Yet we are subsidising its disappearance.

It is not enough for the UN to call for greater access for all to nutritious diets. For the majority of Africa’s rural populations, who are also among its least food-secure, crop diversity is key to diet diversity. It is time for AGRA, the African Development Bank, foreign donors and African governments to stop subsidising and promoting the crops that are driving the loss of such diversity.

The views expressed in this article are the authors’ own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.