When Cristina de Middel told her friends that she was working on a photography project about a 1960s African space program, their first reaction was to laugh. However, it was in this initial reaction that de Middel formed the basis for her project, The Afronauts.

The photography book, which was de Middel's first and was self-published, depicts the seemingly unbelievable story of an imaginative science teacher named Edward Makuka, who sought to make Zambia the first nation to go to outer space. Despite his request for funding being denied by the United Nations, he went ahead and trained 10 men, one woman and two cats.

Makuka would roll his astronauts down a hill in a barrel to simulate weightlessness, and the program ultimately ended when the woman became pregnant from one of the astronauts. However, de Middel's focus on Makuka's optimism and hopefulness challenged viewers to rethink why an African space program could not exist.