Ivory Coast Becomes 75th Artemis Accords Signatory
Minister Adama Diawara signed the Artemis Accords in Abidjan during the ASPEX 2026 space expo, making Ivory Coast the ninth African nation and 75th country worldwide to join the framework.
Ivory Coast signed the Artemis Accords in Abidjan on Thursday, September 24, becoming the 75th nation to join the civil space exploration framework led by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, NASA. The signing took place during the Africa Space Expo, ASPEX 2026, held in the country’s largest city. Adama Diawara, minister of higher education and scientific research, signed on behalf of Ivory Coast, while the ceremony was attended on behalf of the U.S. Department of State by Junaid Munir, chargé d’affaires of the U.S. embassy.
Ivory Coast is now the ninth African nation in the Artemis Accords. NASA deputy administrator Matt Anderson marked the signing, saying:
“The United States and Ivory Coast already cooperate on Earth. Today we extend that partnership beyond it.”
The director general of Ivory Coast’s space agency, whose name NASA spells as Tidiane Outtara on its website while the outlet Space in Africa spells it Tidiane Ouattara, said:
“This is a major achievement, significant for Ivory Coast’s ambitions and for the other member states of the African Union.”
Timeline of African signatories
Ivory Coast signed ten days after Djibouti, which became the eighth African nation in the accords on September 14. Before those two, the Artemis Accords had been signed by Nigeria and Rwanda in December 2022, Angola in November 2023, Senegal in July 2025, Morocco in April 2026, Botswana in June 2026, and Mauritius in July 2026. Ivory Coast is the fifth African nation to join this year alone.
Srpske Novine reported the day before that Croatia had become the 74th signatory, which put Ivory Coast right behind it on the list, just one spot apart.
The Artemis Accords were established in 2020, when NASA and the U.S. Department of State signed the framework together with eight founding nations. The accords lay out a set of practical principles, among them peaceful exploration, transparency, emergency assistance, open sharing of scientific data, avoidance of harmful interference, and preservation of historic sites in space, meant to guide how nations behave while exploring the Moon, Mars, and other bodies in the solar system.
Ivory Coast’s cooperation with NASA did not begin with the Abidjan signing. The two sides have worked together since 2019 on Earth observation and geodesy, the field that measures the planet’s shape, gravity, and motion. In 2025, the country also set up its own space agency, ASCI, responsible for Earth observation, space weather, astronomy, satellite navigation, and communications, and the Artemis Accords signing now formalizes that technical cooperation at the level of national policy.
