Nairobi

by Samson Mawulolo Ahlijah

On 29 August 2047, at around 2.10pm, a strange post appeared on the X social network. The message is succinct and says We’re on our way. At the bottom of the message, it says 32 hours 45 minutes from Elion. Everything seems to indicate that whoever wrote this message is not on Earth, but on a mysterious planet called Elion.

The message quickly divided the web. On the one hand, there are those who are convinced of the message’s extraterrestrial origin, and on the other, those who are doing their utmost to demonstrate that it is nothing more or less than a vulgar hoax. In Paris, Washington, Moscow, Beijing and Brussels, governments are on the alert and defence forces are on maximum alert. After having the message analysed by the world’s top IT experts, the world’s major powers had to face the facts: the Being behind this post is not on Earth, and he posted the message by connecting to a network other than the Internet.

Faced with this situation, the world’s major powers decided to put aside their differences. A high-level meeting was organised in London, bringing together leading scientists, space security experts, politicians, economists and ufologists. Japan, Argentina, Brazil, Mexico and Canada were invited to take part in the discussions. The aim is to define the course of action to take should the mysterious inhabitants of the planet Elion decide to descend on the blue planet. The conference participants agreed on the need to defend the interests of the Earth and its inhabitants.

Two days after the end of the conference, at around 1pm, a huge special vessel that looks vaguely like a lozenge lands on the esplanade of the Eiffel Tower. At the same time, a second message began circulating on the X social network. It was just as succinct as the first, and read as follows: We’re here. This time, the time indicates 13 hours 04 minutes and it was sent from Earth.

The French government immediately deployed the army around the landing site. The other powers were alerted and began to mobilise their military troops. After long minutes of waiting, the spaceship opened and let out six large translucent beings. Their morphology is vaguely similar to that of humans, but their faces are covered in hair like felines. With the help of what appears to be a translator, these strange visitors manage to make contact. They explain that they have come not to wage war, but to establish a win-win partnership. They ask to speak to Earth’s top leaders.

As the news spread around the world, the aliens from the planet Elion were taken to the Élysée Palace where they were welcomed by the French President. In the hours that followed, American, Russian, Japanese, Chinese, Canadian and Brazilian presidents and prime ministers landed in Paris. Western television channels were invaded by analysts and ufologists explaining the consequences that this official contact with an outside world would have on various aspects of life on Earth.

During the discussions, the visitors from Elion explained that they were there to establish commercial, economic and cultural partnerships. They said they needed copper, cobalt, lithium, thorium, uranium and other metals. In exchange, they offer to provide technologies to increase agricultural production and accelerate the regeneration of the land. The West, which had been preparing for this hypothetical meeting for years thanks to the work of scientists and the research of ufologists, quickly set up a committee to define the details of this cooperation.

At the UN, the major powers pledged to work for the good of humanity. At the same time, new mining companies were set up and attention began to turn to Africa.

It has to be said that the African continent has remained a spectator at this major turning point in world history. The African Union, organisations such as ECOWAS, CEMAC and Sadc, and the continent’s major countries such as Nigeria and the DRC, have never shown any interest in the UFO issue or the hypotheses of extraterrestrial life. The continent has only two or three ufologists who have been living for years in Europe and the United States. And unsurprisingly, no African country has been invited to take part in the exchanges with the visitors from Elion.

While the Western media were analysing the impact of the arrival of these visitors on the continent, newspapers, magazines, radio and television channels were invaded by pastors and imams urging believers to pray more, because the arrival of the extraterrestrials was undoubtedly the beginning of the apocalypse and the end of time. Some of the media gave voice to the Kemites, who believed that the arrival of the inhabitants of Elion was just another Western conspiracy, and when the continent’s intellectuals were invited to give their opinion on the situation, they were conspicuous by their ignorance of the subject and the potential stakes.

So while the West was preparing to make the most of its collaboration with the civilisation of Elion, Africa was plunged into a cacophony of unpreparedness, ignorance and superstition. Most of the raw materials needed by the inhabitants of Elion were to be found in Africa. And a way had to be found to exploit them. The Africans, who were absent from the negotiating table, were unaware that these visitors from the sky could enable the continent to solve its problem of food insecurity by increasing agricultural production. Nor did the West see why it should share this technology with African countries. On the contrary, they thought they could use it to increase agricultural production in the North and sell the surplus to African countries.

In the wake of this, revolutions and coups d’état were organised in several African countries. Rulers who were too nosy were replaced by more docile presidents who granted extraction permits to new mining companies without trying to understand what was at stake. The visitors to Elion, satisfied with deliveries of metals and other raw materials, offer the major powers access to their technologies. A large part of the Western world entered a new phase of growth, while in Africa a new era of exploitation began.

Even if this scenario seems to be straight out of a science fiction novel, it is a perfect illustration of the fate that will befall Africa. It is a perfect illustration of the fate that would be reserved for Africa in the event of contact with an extraterrestrial civilisation. If the continent is currently lagging behind and seems to be on the margins of the world’s major societal and technological transformations, it is partly because of a lack of foresight.

The skies over Africa, like those over America and Europe, have for many years been visited by strange flying machines that are probably not from this world. Most countries have set up organisations to study these phenomena. Examples include GEIPAN, which is part of CNES, and MUFON in the United States. Ufologists from the four corners of the globe have been working for decades on various hypotheses concerning contact with extraterrestrial life.

Meanwhile, on the continent where modern man was born, the question of UFOs remains ignored and completely absent from all intellectual discussions. Unprepared for the possibility of alien contact, it is only natural that the continent should not only be ostracised, but also exploited (perhaps brutally) in the context of inter-planetary collaboration.

To prevent this nightmare scenario from becoming a reality, African decision-makers and continental and sub-regional organisations need to take an interest in the UFO issue in order to define an African approach to this mystery.

Setting up continent-wide structures for research and forecasting on Unexplained Aerial Phenomena (UAP) will help to identify an African course of action to follow in the event of official (or unofficial) contact between humanity and an intelligence from elsewhere.