What is Digital Earth Africa?

Introduction

Africa is a continent with a rich and diverse environment that faces many challenges such as ready access to drinking water, rapid urban development, active deforestation and food insecurity. Our understanding of these challenges connects directly to how well we understand its natural resources, and the human and climate impact on them.

The Digital Earth Africa (DE Africa) program aims to increase this understanding through three main tenets:

• Explore: Allow access to satellite data in ways that address Africa’s needs

• Learn: Provide avenues for learning about Earth observation technology and its significance for policymaking and improving the lives of Africans

• Engage: Stimulate participation and collaboration in events that will help implement, scale and sustain the program

As such, Digital Earth Africa is a platform designed to:

• Catalogue large amounts of Earth observation data

• Allow users the ability to easily perform exploratory data analysis

• Allow scalable continent-wide processing of stored data

• Monitor contained data for quality control and updates

For more details on the Digital Earth Africa program, visit the Digital Earth Africa homepage. If you would like to learn more about Earth observations in general, take a look at this summary document by the OECD.