The Promise and the Gap in Lunar Governance
When the first eight nations signed the Artemis Accords in October 2020, it felt like a genuine shift. NASA and the U.S. State Department had pulled together a practical playbook for how countries should behave on the Moon—peaceful operations, transparency, help each other out in an emergency. The Accords didn’t invent new law from scratch; they built directly on the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, translating lofty principles into workable commitments. By 2025, more than forty nations have joined. You’ll find traditional heavyweights alongside smaller, newly space-curious states. That’s the good news. The bad news? Look at a map of signatories and you’ll notice whole chunks of the planet barely register. The conversation about humanity’s off-world future is happening, but far too many voices aren’t in the room.
The Artemis Accords set a standard the whole international community should be invited to meet. If we let this slide, we’ll end up with a lunar rulebook written by the few, for the few—and that kind of arrangement has a nasty habit of collapsing under its own weight. This isn’t just a diplomatic to-do list item. It’s a structural crack that, left alone, will weaken the Accords’ legitimacy and bite us when the stakes are highest.
What Signing Actually Means
Before we dig into who’s missing, let’s be clear about what these agreements actually ask of a country. The Artemis Accords aren’t a formal treaty—they’re a set of bilateral deals between the U.S. and each signatory. Thirteen sections cover the operational and ethical nuts and bolts: peaceful purposes, transparency, interoperable systems, emergency assistance, registering space objects, sharing scientific data, protecting heritage sites, extracting space resources, deconflicting activities, and managing orbital debris.
The space resources section gets most of the headlines. It states plainly that mining and using lunar materials is consistent with the Outer Space Treaty—a position that, let’s be honest, some governments still find uncomfortable. For a nation to sign, it needs to show it’s serious about space and willing to play by these norms. The bar isn’t impossibly high, but you do need a functioning space policy and the diplomatic machinery to follow through. That’s exactly where the gap starts to yawn open.
Who’s at the Table—and Who’s Not
The signatory list tilts heavily toward North America, Europe, and the Asia-Pacific. The United States, Canada, Japan, Australia, most European Space Agency members—they’re all in. A handful of Gulf states, Brazil, and Colombia have stepped up from other regions. But look at sub-Saharan Africa and you can count the signatories on one hand. South and Southeast Asia? Thin beyond India. Latin America and the Caribbean are mostly blank spaces, with a few exceptions. The Middle East and North Africa are present, sure, but far from fully represented.
This lopsided map didn’t happen by accident. It mirrors decades of uneven investment, technical gaps, and diplomatic bandwidth that’s already stretched to the limit. Yet the Accords were designed to lower barriers, not reinforce them. Remember, the first country to sign after the original eight was Ukraine—a nation with a proud aerospace history but limited independent launch capability at the time. The Accords are explicitly open to any responsible actor, no matter where they stand on the technical ladder today.
Why a Narrow Club Is a Real Risk
I’ve heard the argument: as long as the big space players agree, the Accords will work fine. That confuses day-to-day efficiency with long-term political survival. Space governance doesn’t float in a bubble. The norms we lock in now will dictate commercial rights, who gets what resources, which science gets priority, and even how we treat cultural artifacts on the Moon for decades. If large parts of the world feel shut out during the rule-writing phase, they’ll eventually push back against the rules themselves.
We’ve watched this movie before. Ocean governance stumbled when early frameworks looked like rich-country clubs. Internet protocol debates got messy. Climate finance is still wrestling with the same trust deficit. The Moon could easily follow the same script. An alternative set of norms—cooked up through the UN Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space, or through rival bilateral deals—could splinter the legal landscape and dial up the risk of conflict.
A widely accepted framework, on the other hand, gets tougher with every new member. When lots of states have skin in the game, they help maintain it. They interpret fuzzy areas, sort out disputes, and adapt when surprises hit. The Artemis Accords will face tests no founding partner can predict: fights over prime landing spots, arguments about environmental damage, clashes between commercial claims and scientific preservation. A diverse coalition makes whatever decisions come out of those tests far more durable.
The View from Africa and the Global South
I’m an African scientist. When I watch these developments, I feel hope and unease in equal measure. African space ambitions are real and growing. The African Space Agency, based in Cairo, became operational in 2023. Nigeria, South Africa, Kenya, Ethiopia—they’re expanding satellite programs, building ground stations, training a new generation of engineers. Rwanda and Angola have launched communications satellites. Nobody’s doing this for prestige. They’re chasing concrete needs: agriculture, disaster response, climate monitoring, connectivity.
But only a tiny number of African states have signed the Artemis Accords. Why? The reasons stack up. Some governments barely know the Accords exist or what they mean. Others have tiny space teams juggling a dozen priorities; joining a new framework feels like a luxury when you’re already drowning. And there’s a lingering suspicion that the Accords mostly serve advanced space powers—especially that resource extraction clause, which some read as a green light for unilateral commercial exploitation.
These worries deserve a proper hearing, not a brush-off. The Accords themselves say space resource extraction must comply with the Outer Space Treaty, which bans national appropriation. The text calls for transparency and international coordination. But perception matters, and the only way to change it is patient diplomacy, real capacity-building partnerships, and making sure diverse signatories are visibly involved in the ongoing implementation talks.
Capacity Building as a Bridge
One of the most practical ways to widen the tent is targeted capacity building. The Artemis Accords don’t demand your own launch vehicles or a human spaceflight program. They ask for a commitment to responsible behavior and enough baseline capacity to carry out the obligations. That baseline can be built with international help.
Workshops, legal training, technical exchanges—these can show small and emerging space agencies what the Accords look like in practice. NASA and the State Department have started some outreach, but it needs to be scaled up and spread around, bringing in other experienced signatories as mentors. The United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs already runs a solid Space Law for New Space Actors project; linking that work to the Accords would be an obvious next step.
Regional bodies can carry weight here too. The African Union, ASEAN, the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States—they could facilitate collective engagement, easing the burden on individual countries. When a group of neighboring states joins together, they bring a shared perspective that enriches the whole framework.
The Resource Extraction Elephant in the Room
Let’s not dance around it: the space resources section is still the most politically charged part of the Accords. Some non-signatory states argue that any extraction of lunar materials needs a more detailed international regime, maybe under the Moon Agreement—which, for the record, has a pretty short list of parties. The Accords take a different path, saying the Outer Space Treaty permits extraction and that signatories will keep the UN Secretary-General informed.
This debate isn’t fading away. Broader participation could actually help settle it. If more developing nations join, they get a seat at the table to shape how the resource provisions are interpreted day to day. They can push for benefit-sharing mechanisms, environmental standards, transparency measures that reflect a wider set of interests. Sitting outside the framework means handing away that influence.
Why Commercial Players Want a Broad Base Too
Private companies are no longer side characters in lunar exploration. SpaceX, Blue Origin, ispace, Astrobotic—they’re building landers, rovers, the backbone infrastructure. These firms need regulatory predictability. If the Accords cover only part of the globe, companies face a confusing patchwork of rules when they look for customers, investors, or partners across borders. A broad, stable legal environment makes commercial ventures more bankable.
And here’s a twist: the commercial sector itself can pull more countries in. Satellite communications and Earth observation services already connect remote communities, track climate shifts, manage resources. When companies from signatory nations offer these services to non-signatory states, they create natural bridges. Those relationships can open conversations about joining the Accords—not as a condition of service, but as a logical extension of shared interests in safe, sustainable space operations.
Making the Accords Truly Global
Broadening participation won’t happen by accident. It takes deliberate work on several fronts. First, current signatories need to make a real push into underrepresented regions—not just ceremonial invitations, but funding legal workshops, sponsoring attendance at space policy forums, weaving Accords discussions into wider development partnerships.
Second, the Accords’ own governance should become more inclusive. Right now, the United States chairs the signatory meetings and sets much of the agenda. That made sense at the start, but as the group grows, a rotating chairmanship or regional co-chairs would send a clear signal that all voices count. Working groups on implementation, safety zones, heritage protection should draw members from across the signatory spectrum, not just the original core.
Third, the international community should tackle the resource extraction question directly. A supplementary protocol, developed by a broad working group, could clarify how benefit-sharing, environmental protection, and dispute resolution will work in practice. That would answer a major objection keeping some states on the sidelines.
The Stakes Are Higher Than They Look
I know, I know—worrying about lunar governance when we’re still years from permanent settlements feels like getting ahead of ourselves. But the frameworks we build now will set the template for everything that comes after. The Artemis Accords aren’t just about the Moon; they’re a test run for how humanity governs places that fall outside any single nation’s jurisdiction. Get this right, and we set a precedent for Mars, asteroids, and whatever’s next. Get it wrong, and we replay the worst bits of terrestrial history—exclusion, resource grabs, fragmented authority.
Broader participation isn’t a nice-to-have or a box to tick later. It’s a condition for lasting success. Every nation that signs brings a piece of the global community into the fold. Every nation that stays out represents a missing perspective, a potential friction point, and a lost chance to build something genuinely universal.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the Artemis Accords?
The Artemis Accords are a set of bilateral agreements led by NASA and the U.S. State Department that establish practical principles for cooperation in space exploration, with a focus on the Moon. They cover transparency, interoperability, emergency assistance, scientific data sharing, space resource extraction, and debris mitigation. They’re grounded in the 1967 Outer Space Treaty and are open to all responsible spacefaring nations.
Why are so few African nations signatories?
Several factors are at play. Many African space agencies are still building their legal and technical capacity, and the diplomatic effort to join a new framework competes with other urgent priorities. Some governments also have concerns about the resource extraction provisions or simply lack awareness of the Accords. Targeted outreach and capacity-building programs can help break down these barriers.
Does signing the Accords mean a country must have its own lunar program?
No. The Accords don’t require independent launch capability or human spaceflight programs. They ask signatories to commit to responsible behavior, transparency, and international coordination. Even nations with modest space activities can join and benefit from the cooperative framework, contributing their perspectives to the evolving norms of lunar governance.
How can broader participation be encouraged?
Encouraging broader participation takes sustained diplomatic engagement, legal and technical capacity building, and making the governance of the Accords more inclusive. Regional bodies can help coordinate entry, and existing signatories can fund workshops and mentorship programs. Addressing concerns about resource extraction through supplementary protocols would also bring more states to the table.