Dunia in 2025: A Year of Impact, Innovation, and Inclusive Earth Observation
What Makes Dunia Different From Other Earth Observation Platforms
Accessing and processing satellite data has often been a challenge, especially for developers and beginners in regions with limited infrastructure. Traditional platforms require heavy computational resources and reliable high-speed internet, leaving many potential users behind. This is where Dunia comes in, a revolutionary EO platform designed to bridge the gap and empower users across Africa.
Born out of necessity, Dunia addresses a critical flaw in EO adoption: the heavy reliance on local processing power. Centralising data processing in the cloud eliminates the need for high-capacity servers, allowing users to work directly with Copernicus Sentinel datasets and other EO resources without costly hardware. What truly sets Dunia apart is its optimisation for low-bandwidth environments, making it accessible even in remote and rural areas where connectivity is a challenge.
Dunia has been transforming how Africans leverage satellite data to solve real-world problems, from agriculture to disaster management, for over a year. Yet, if this is your first time hearing about it, you’ve been missing out on one of the most user-centric EO tools available today.
With a growing community of 1,400 users and counting, Dunia continuously evolves to ensure accessibility for everyone, regardless of their technical background. Whether you’re a seasoned developer or just starting your EO journey, Dunia provides the tools to turn satellite data into actionable solutions, helping tackle pressing challenges across the continent.
Building Momentum: Dunia’s Activities in the First Half of 2025
Training and Events: Skill-building Across the Continent
At the outset of 2025, Dunia launched into action by delivering targeted capacity-building sessions. In January, training programmes focused on Wetland and Flood Mapping and Drought and Vegetation Stress analysis. These sessions leveraged the Dunia Sandbox environment and introduced users to the Dunia Streaming API, which enables accelerated, efficient data access directly into user platforms, an essential upgrade for development agencies, environmental managers, and EO practitioners across Africa.
By April, Dunia’s visibility expanded further during the NewSpace Africa Conference 2025, held from 21–24 April at the Egyptian Space Agency (EgSA) in Cairo. Featured at the European Space Agency (ESA) booth, Dunia was presented as a forward-thinking platform pushing the boundaries of EO accessibility. The event was not only historic because of the inauguration but also symbolic of Africa’s growing authority in global space affairs, a vision to which Dunia directly contributes.
Soon after, Dunia engaged with universities in Uganda and partnered with Catalysts Africa to introduce its Sandbox capabilities to students and researchers. In May, Dunia was actively showcased at the Marché Africain des Solutions Spatiales/ African Space Solutions Market (MASS) Conference in Abidjan. Represented by Michaela Seewald from GeoVille, Dunia delivered interactive demos that highlighted real-world use cases, an approach that inspired budding EO professionals and decision-makers across the continent. Furthermore, Dunia hosted the “Wildfire Monitoring with Sentinel-3 and Dunia” on May 28, 2025, focusing on real-time wildfire detection using Sentinel-3 data. Participants learned how to access and analyse Sentinel-3 imagery, follow a step-by-step workflow within the Dunia Application Hub, and explore real-world use cases for wildfire monitoring. The webinar also demonstrated how users could share their applications on the Dunia Marketplace to support broader community impact.
These engagements set the tone for a year defined by empowerment, outreach, and inclusion.
Technical Milestones: Sentinel-2 Streaming and In-Browser Analytics
In April 2025, Dunia released a major upgrade: continent-wide Sentinel-2 data streaming powered by its proprietary EarthStreamer technology. Dunia quickly followed this with a May 2025 release enabling browser-based index calculations, all marking a significant step toward a decentralised EO ecosystem modelled after the early Internet.
Highlights include:
- Streamed 10m resolution Sentinel-2 imagery at a continental scale
- Optimised downloads enabling one month’s worth of data in under 30 minutes on a 10 Mbit/s connection
- Integration of a WebAssembly (WASM) module suite, making it possible to compute indices such as NDVI, NDWI, NDBI, MNDWI, and NDMI directly in-browser
- Full Python Toolbox compatibility for time-series and tile-based processing
These updates significantly enhance EO accessibility for users in low-bandwidth or infrastructure-limited environments, reinforcing Dunia’s goal of empowered edge computing and data democratisation.
User-Centric Innovation: Co-Designing the Future
In early 2025, Dunia launched a Co-Design Initiative, a bold step toward developing EO tools with users, not just for them. Through a participatory survey, users across Africa contributed feedback on:
- Platform strengths and shortcomings
- Desired features and future improvements
- Practical experiences and aspirations
This approach reflects Dunia’s commitment to open development, transparency, and community-led innovation, ensuring the platform evolves with its growing user base. Users can still contribute feedback via this link.
What Lies Ahead: Dunia’s Plans for the Second Half of 2025
A Fully Integrated Ecosystem: The Dunia Billing System & Soko Marketplace
A major system update is underway: Dunia’s billing infrastructure, slated for release in the second half of 2025. This system will transform how users interact with the platform by offering:
- Purchase flexible resource tiers: Select from a range of resource levels and pay only when actively in use.
- Monetise your work: List and sell your applications and datasets on the Soko Marketplace to reach a broader user base.
- Access ready-to-use solutions: Instantly purchase and deploy applications or datasets from other users, no delays or approval processes required.
The billing platform will support purchases such as extra processing resources and specialised setups, including GPUs for machine learning and AI. Ultimately, this launch will serve as proof of concept for sustainable EO economies, setting a benchmark for global financial innovation within Earth Observation platforms.
Continuing the Learning Journey: Trainings and Webinars
Pan-African Impact: Dunia DroughtLab & EO Coding Challenge
Dunia, in partnership with the Sahara and Sahel Observatory (OSS), is proud to announce the 2025 Earth Observation (EO) Coding Challenge. This entirely online, pan-African competition empowers young innovators to transform satellite data into real-world solutions. Running from May 22 to October 31, 2025, this challenge invites participants to develop scalable applications for drought monitoring, crop stress detection, and vegetation change mapping using cutting-edge EO data.
Hosted under the GMES & Africa framework, participants will leverage Dunia’s cloud-based platform, including its Sandbox and Application Hub, to build interactive Python or R notebooks. The challenge encourages using machine learning, EO indices, and advanced analytics to generate actionable insights for sustainable water and land management.
Key features of the challenge:
- Expert-Led Learning Journey (September 2025) – Webinars and tutorials to master Dunia’s EO tools.
- Powerful Cloud Platform – No setup required; develop directly in Dunia’s Sandbox.
- Real-World Impact – Solutions that address Africa’s pressing environmental challenges.
- Team presentations on 30 October, 2025.
- A virtual award ceremony on October 31, streamed live from Tunis.
Prizes for 1st Place, Runner-Up & People’s Choice Awards include:
- Presentation opportunities at the GMES Forum in Cairo
- Recognition from ESA, OSS, and Dunia
- Dunia merchandise, credits, and digital certificates
(Teams of 1–3, aged 18+, with strong encouragement for women in EO/tech. Registration link: [Link])
Upcoming Training: Dunia Streaming in Focus
Dunia is launching a new training session on August 12, 2025, focused on cutting-edge streaming technology designed to make satellite data more accessible, particularly in low-bandwidth environments. This hands-on session will introduce participants to DuniaStreamer, a web application that enables real-time interaction with Earth Observation (EO) data directly from a browser, eliminating the need for heavy downloads or cloud infrastructure.
Participants will get a comprehensive overview of the streaming system, starting with an introduction to the technology and how it improves traditional EO workflows. The session will then guide users through the DuniaStreamer interface, demonstrating how to:
- Overview of the DuniaStreamer web application
- Satellite selection, resolution adjustment, and GeoTIFF export
- Use the DuniaStreamer web application
- Integrate the Streaming API into your system
- Include the streaming technology in your code using the Dunia Streaming Toolbox for Python
Additionally, the training will cover the Streaming API, allowing developers to integrate streaming data into custom applications. For advanced users, the Dunia Streaming Toolbox will be introduced, providing powerful Python tools for:
- Building ad-hoc data cubes
- Resampling time series
- Conducting local analyses
Ideal for researchers, developers, and analysts in EO, disaster response, and environmental management, this session bridges technical capability with real-world relevance. Sessions will also be offered in French, reinforcing Dunia’s commitment to accessibility across linguistic regions. Full training details and registration information are available here.
Conclusion
From technical innovation to inclusive engagement and forward-looking plans, Dunia’s journey in 2025 is one of a bold vision in action. By anchoring its strategy in community, accessibility, and cutting-edge EO technology, Dunia is not only delivering tools but is also enabling transformation across Africa’s data and decision-making landscapes. Dunia’s momentum is unmistakable, and the second half of 2025 is set to deepen its impact across users, sectors, and systems.