ESA Extends the EO AFRICA R&D Phase Two Project by Three Years to Drive EO Capabilities Across Africa
Key Highlight
- Following a successful evaluation of EO AFRICA R&D first phase (2021-2024), the European Space Agency (ESA) has granted the EO AFRICA R&D Facility a three-year extension to embark on Phase 2 from 2024 to 2027.
The Earth Observation Africa Research and Development (EO AFRICA R&D) Facility Consortium has announced that, after successfully evaluating its first phase (2021-2024), the European Space Agency (ESA) has granted a three-year extension. This extension allows the EO AFRICA R&D Facility to embark on Phase 2 from 2024 to 2027, marking a new chapter that will create significant opportunities for African-European collaboration, drive innovation, and enhance EO capabilities across Africa.
Over the next three years, the Consortium will concentrate on two crucial themes: water scarcity and food security. In addition, the Consortium will also pay attention to the following:
- Deliver more face-to-face and online training, hackathons, and webinars on the use of EO and related cloud computing technology for water and food security applications to strengthen capacity development in Africa.
- Organise two research calls for African-European research tandems, providing the cloud computing facility and technical support to develop, test, run, and optimise scientific workflows based on EO data to address pressing research questions in the African context.
- Support the development of EO-based training materials and curricula for African Universities through a call on education.
- Keep working on building a proactive African-European R&D network.
About EO AFRICA Initiative
The primary objective of the Facility Consortium is to promote African-European collaboration, foster an active research community, and drive innovative processes for the continuous development of EO capabilities in Africa. The R&D Facility will assess the challenges facing African EO research and issue calls for research to address the most critical issues. It will provide researchers with modern cloud computing and digital tools and support various collaborative activities and initiatives between the African and European research communities.