South Africans aren’t as flag-obsessed as our friends over in America, where many porches are adorned with the red, white and blue, but we do take a certain pride in waving our brightly-coloured rainbow effort for all to see.

Now we’ve taking that pride to the next level with the Giant Flag project, who have undertaken to build a massive flower display in The Valley of Desolation, just outside Graaff Reinet, that will be visible from space.

Here’s a little from BusinessTech:

It will consist of as many as 2.5 million red, yellow, blue and green desert plants, including cacti and spekboom.

The flag’s black triangular space will contain a 4-megawatt solar-panel field, generating electricity for the region.

Once completed – hopefully in 2017 – the flag will span the size of 66 soccer fields, will supply power to the equivalent of 4,000 homes, create jobs for 700 people, and boost tourism by as much as 25%…

The project has a projected cost of $12 million, with funding already generated by sponsorships, partnerships and donations from local governments, private companies, nonprofits and individuals.

The organisers of the the project have also started crowdsourcing  – asking people to “adopt a plant” for R100 per plant. The project’s website indicates that the team is 25% toward its 1st threshold goal of $2.5 million.

We now have our first satellite image of the outlines in place:

And those outlines again, this picture from a little lower taken last month:

When it all comes together here’s what one artist believes those from space will be gazing down on:

You can follow all the latest details on their Facebook page (HERE), but for now we’ll look book at the video Giant Flag created when they first announced the project:

[source:businesstech]