How important is space travel for Africa?

"If not now, then when? And if you don’t do it, who else will?”

Those are the two questions Sara Sabry suggests all woman ask themselves when they’re thinking through a big move… and finding they don’t have the confidence to follow it through.

And she should know. The Egyptian mechanical and biomedical engineer was the first African woman in space when she blasted off in Blue Origin’s New Shepherd rocket in 2022. She’s the founder of Deep Space Initiative, an organisation with the mission to make space and the study of space more accessible– and she dreams of one day being part of a community living on the moon and eventually ‘retiring on Mars’.

But is space travel and research really something for Africa to invest in when there are so many other priorities?

Alan Kasujja hears her thoughts.