Abstract
There is no doubt anymore that Earth Observation (EO) is contributing
toward meeting the Sustainable Development Goals and addressing
environmental challenges. Digital Earth Africa’s objective is to make
freely available an EO data cube for all of Africa that democratizes the
capacity to process and analyse satellite data. It allows to track
changes across Africa in unprecedented detail and will provide data on a
vast number of issues, including soil and coastal erosion, agriculture,
forest and desert development, water quality, and changes to human
settlements. To realise full benefits of an advanced Platform like
Digital Earth Africa, Digital Earth Africa has co-designed and
co-developed with five institutions namely the Regional Centre For
Mapping Of Resources For Development (RCMRD, Kenya), Centre de Suivi
Écologique (Senegal), l’observatoire du Sahara et du Sahel (Tunisia),
AFRIGIST (Nigeria) and AGRHYMET (Niger). This was meant to ensure it
meets end-users needs, this program has been developed by the future
deliverers of the program. From the trainers’ perspective, the program
is built to consider the recent changes in teaching approaches and
methodologies including pedagogy that emerged from a Covid-19, and post
Covid-19, pandemic world. On the end-user side, the curriculum covered a
wide spectrum of topics, from understanding satellite images, python
scripting in the JupyterLab environment to identifying solutions to SDGs
challenges through use cases, available in English and French. Digital
Earth Africa’s Gender Equity, Diversity and Social Inclusion principles
strategy (GEDSI) is imprinted as a watermark across the whole program.
It prioritises gender equality, diversity, and social inclusion so that
women, people with disabilities and marginalised individuals and
communities have the same opportunities to benefit from EO data. In
addition, Digital Earth Africa started live virtual sessions, to stay
connected with end users, who have developed impactive stories in their
communities. Digital Earth Africa seeks to support the capacity
development of individuals, academic and governmental institutions, and
private sector organisations to empower present and next generation of
decision makers to drive toward a sustainable future, leaving on one and
place behind.