The True-Ish Story

From Ryan Calais Cameron, the Sky Arts Award-winning writer of For Black Boys and Retrograde comes The Afronauts, telling the incredible, almost-forgotten story of Zambia's bold bid to conquer the final frontier; a space mission fuelled not by money or machinery, but by imagination and belief. Led by an idealistic schoolteacher with nothing to lose and everything to prove, a group of unlikely visionaries prepare to launch themselves into space travel history.

The Real Afronauts

In the early 1960s, shortly after Zambia gained independence, schoolteacher Edward Makuka Nkoloso founded the Zambia National Academy of Science, Space Research and Philosophy. His ambitious goal was to train and launch the first African astronauts into space, and even to send a mission to the Moon (and later Mars) before the United States or the Soviet Union could get there. Although the project never came close to launching a rocket, it captured imaginations around the world. Inspiring the Afrofuturist film of the same name in 2014, it's a delightful story about what could have been.