In a press release on 28 March 2023 by Digital Earth Africa (DE Africa), the organisation secured three years of additional funding from the Leona M and Harry B Helmsley Charitable Trust. The grant will advance DE Africa’s objectives to continuously provide free and accessible Earth Observation (EO) data to Africa till 2026 and beyond.

The Managing Director of DE Africa, Dr Thembi Xaba, confirmed that the next stage of funding and investment, expected to begin in mid-2023, will significantly aid DE Africa in establishing its operations in Africa, advancing in-country interactions, and accelerating substantial community exchange.

“With support like this from our funding partners, the Helmsley Charitable Trust and the Australian Government Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, DE Africa is on track to improve the lives of African people by providing planners and policymakers with tailored Earth Observation information to support better decision making and enhance sustainable development outcomes,” Dr Thembi Xaba commented.

In collaboration with Amazon Web Services Amazon Sustainability Data Initiative, DE Africa has accumulated over 3.5 Petabytes of data at the AWS Africa (Cape Town) region to ensure a reliable and secure platform for users.

“Our platform and services enable African governments, industry and decision-makers to track changes across the continent in unprecedented detail, providing valuable insights for better decision-making across many areas, including flooding, drought, soil and coastal erosion, agriculture, forest cover, land use and land cover change, and water availability and quality. We are excited about this next phase of the program and are continually grateful for the support of our funding partners, particularly the Helmsley Charitable Trust. In addition, this will allow the program to continue strengthening and empowering users across the continent to harness the power of Earth observation data and services for better decision-making.“ Dr Thembi Xaba stated.

Furthermore, the inauguration of DE Africa in 2019 has been marked by various partnerships and collaborative efforts with national, regional, and international institutions and relevant stakeholders to promote socio-economic growth across the continent. In addition, DE Africa supplies open-source data and products to end-users to support decision-making processes across African multi-sectoral industries.