A Nigerian frontier practice. Three intersecting domains: space and strategic policy, health and human systems, innovation and infrastructure.
The legal frameworks that govern outer space, public health, and the systems we build on Earth were largely written in a different century for a different century. The technologies that now define them did not exist when their rules were drafted. Lurcene exists to close that gap — to advise, litigate, and publish where law has not yet caught up with what is possible, and to do so from an African vantage point that the global frontier has too often ignored.
Satellite licensing. Launch and liability. The legal architecture of orbit.
Medical regulation. Bioethics. The policy design of health systems built for the next century.
IP and emerging technology. Algorithmic governance. The legal infrastructure of smart cities and digital assets.
The distinction the 1967 Outer Space Treaty rests on — lawful militarisation vs. prohibited weaponisation — no longer describes anything real.
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Anti-satellite weapons. Directed-energy systems. Autonomous orbital decision-making. The distinction between militarisation and weaponisation has become a diplomatic euphemism — and the cost of that ambiguity is now measured in escalation risk, not theory.
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Working Paper · Lurcene Research · In Draft
The 1967 Outer Space Treaty announced that outer space is "the province of all mankind"[1], a phrase as poetic as it is unenforceable. For six decades, the treaty's central bargain held: states would not appropriate celestial bodies, and in exchange, no private actor could lawfully do so either. That bargain is now breaking.
Three developments — taken together — render the treaty's silence on private property unsustainable. First, the U.S. Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act[2] grants American citizens the right to "possess, own, transport, use, and sell" resources extracted from asteroids. Second, the Artemis Accords, signed by Nigeria, formalize "safety zones" around lunar operations — a euphemism, perhaps, for de facto territorial claims. Third, the Luxembourg space resources framework[3] has been quietly replicated across emerging space jurisdictions, including the UAE.
For Nigeria, the doctrinal question is not whether to participate in this new order, but on what terms. The National Space Research and Development Agency Act of 1999 predates every meaningful development in commercial space and contains no provision for private licensing[4]. A Nigerian satellite operator today must navigate a patchwork of NASRDA goodwill, ITU coordination, and foreign launch contracts — with liability flowing back to the Federal Republic under Article VII of the Outer Space Treaty[5] regardless of who pressed the launch button.
This paper proposes a draft Nigerian Space Activities Bill modeled on three pillars: (i) a domestic licensing regime that internalizes Article VII liability through mandatory third-party insurance; (ii) a registry of authorized operators consistent with the Registration Convention[6]; and (iii) a continental coordination mechanism through the African Space Agency to prevent regulatory arbitrage among AU member states.
The treaties that govern outer space, public health, and the systems we build on Earth were written before the technologies that now define them existed.
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