Dakar, Senegal 15 May 2022 (ECA) - Digital Earth Africa is steadfastly becoming the “connecting-the-dots” part of Africa’s efforts to harness information resources for the society and knowledge-led economy, says Oliver Chinganya, Director, Africa Centre for Statistics at the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA).
“The Programme has started paving a new way to build a robust data infrastructure that can help us have a better understanding of our changing landscape and provide insights that can enable African governments, NGOs, businesses, and individuals to make more informed decisions,” said Mr Chinganya.
The ECA director who is also a Board Member of Digital Earth Africa was speaking at a side event on Digital Earth Africa: Earth observations for sustainability in Africa organized by the African Centre for Statistics division of ECA and Digital Earth Africa on the margins of the Economic Commission for Africa’s annual Conference of Ministers of Finance, Economic Planning and Development (CoM2022) in Dakar, Senegal.
The objective of the side event is to showcase the development of Digital Earth Africa as a unique information resource for sustainable development across Africa and to explain how Digital Earth Africa is being applied in areas such as national statistics, agriculture and water resources.
Mr Chinganya noted that ECA will continue to use its convening power to foster the dialogue with member States, African sciences and research institutions, existing networks and programmes, as well as other sectors to increase awareness in space science and technology insights for economic growth and social development. The Commission remains engaged to promote and support the Digital Earth Africa vision, goals and anticipated activities for the benefit of our continent.
Lisa Hall, managing director Digital Earth Africa Establishment Team said the goal of Digital Earth Africa is to deliver an exceptional fit-for-purpose platform of Earth observation satellite imagery into information and insights on the changing African landscape and coastline, which will open new data frontiers for tracking progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals.
“Digital Earth Africa catalogues changes across Africa in unprecedented detail and provides spatially enabled data on a vast number of issues, including soil and coastal erosion, agriculture, forest and desert development, water quality and changes to human settlements,” said Ms Hall.
Zviko Mudamu, Head of Operations, Digital Earth Africa said, Digital earth Africa is helping provide the data required which was already a gap before with the various partnerships we engaged with the various governments in Africa.
“Digital Earth is empowering communities with access to satellite information; communities have been empowered and are sharing their impact stories such as conservation of mangroves in Zanzibar, roaming of giraffes at Lake Baringo in Kenya,” said Mr Mudamu
About Digital Earth
The concept of “Digital Earth” was put forward in 1998 by the then Vice-President of the United States of America, Al Gore. Since then, Digital Earth has evolved to embrace the development and adoption of technologies such as Earth observation, geo-information systems, global positioning systems, geospatial science and technology and space sciences.
Issued by:
Communications Section
Economic Commission for Africa
PO Box 3001
Addis Ababa
Ethiopia
Tel: +251 11 551 5826
E-mail: eca-info@un.org