In the framework of the ESA EO AFRICA initiative, the R&D Facility in collaboration with European Space Agency (ESA) and the African Union Commission (AUC), launched at the end of 2021 a call for research proposals to support African-European collaborative efforts to develop innovative, open-source EO algorithms and applications adapted to African solutions for African challenges. Proposals in the themes of water scarcity and food security were expected to create EO algorithms and workflows by leveraging cutting-edge cloud-based data access and computing infrastructure. A budget up to 25,000 EUR for research activities during a period of 12 months, free access to cloud-based Virtual Research Environments through the Innovation Lab of the Facility, dedicated user and technical support, access to EO AFRICA Space Academy events, and integration into the EO AFRICA Network for international scientific collaboration, were the benefits offered to the research projects.
62 proposals were received from research teams lead by African-European tandems from 23 African and 16 European countries. After a comprehensive evaluation process, which involved review of each proposal by at least two domain experts for 40 different criteria and scoring in 6 different categories, the Committee in collaboration with ESA and AUC awarded 15 research projects listed below for funding from 12 African and 9 European countries.
The projects are expected to start following the special EO AFRICA R&D session of the ESA’s Living Planet Symposium, which will take place in Bonn on May 23-27.
Read more HERE.
List of Funded Projects in alphabetical order
| Title | Co-PIs | Countries |
| A workflow for forecasting primary productivity and its determining climatic factors using remote sensing in the eastern Sahel region | Adam – Toth | South Africa – Hungary |
| Applying innovative cloud computing technology for the effective management of Groundwater resources to promote Sustainable food security within the Sokoto Basin, Nigeria | Oladeji – Novellino | Nigeria – U.K. |
| Crop Stress Monitoring in the semi-arid context of Doukkala, Morocco | El Ghandour – Corbari | Morocco – Italy |
| Drought impact on the vegetation of South African semiarid mosaic landscapes: Implications on grass-crop-lands primary production | Dube – Andreu | South Africa – Spain |
| Fusion of EO data for crop yield forecast in Benin and Morocco | Brouziyne – Lehnert | Morocco – Germany |
| Improvement of Agricultural Statistics in the cotton zone of Mali thanks to the synergy of the Sentinel-1 and 2 time series | Traore – Defourny | Mali – Belgium |
| Integration of open-source solutions with deep learning for estimating crop production in data-scarce smallholder farming areas | Mengistu – Lang | Ethiopia – Austria |
| Mapping and Monitoring Artisanal Mining from Space | Forkuor – Ullmann | Ghana – Germany |
| Monitoring by optical and radar satellite imagery of the level and volume of water in the lakes Buyo and Kossou dams in Côte d’Ivoire | Kouame – Mertens | Côte d’Ivoire – France |
| Quantifying Soil Moisture from Space-based Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) and Ground-based Geophysical and Hydrological Measurements | Djanni – Gao | Senegal – Spain |
| Rising with temperature! Reconstructing the hydroclimatic record of Lake Naivasha with Earth Observation | Ongo – Salama | Kenya – Netherlands |
| Sentinel-1 and -2 data fusion for mapping smallholder cropping areas in southern Africa to support crop monitoring and yield forecasting | Hamunyela – Herold | Namibia – Germany |
| SENTINELs for Cape Verde Water & Food Security Monitoring | Tavares – Mannaerts | Cabo Verde – Netherlands |
| Towards daily maps of water hyacinth cover: exploiting synergies between Sentinel-2 and 3 | Shoko – Penning de Vries | South Africa – Netherlands |
| West Africa Lake Monitoring System | Belfrid – van der Kwast | Benin – Netherlands |