List of Awarded Proposals – EO AFRICA R&D Research Projects [First Call]

In the framework of the ESA EO AFRICA initiative, the R&D Facility in collaboration with European Space Agency (ESA) and the African Union Commission (AUC), launched at the end of 2021 a call for research proposals to support African-European collaborative efforts to develop innovative, open-source EO algorithms and applications adapted to African solutions for African challenges.

Proposals in the themes of water scarcity and food security were expected to create EO algorithms and workflows by leveraging cutting-edge cloud-based data access and computing infrastructure. A budget up to 25,000 EUR for research activities during a period of 12 months, free access to cloud-based Virtual Research Environments through the Innovation Lab of the Facility, dedicated user and technical support, access to EO AFRICA Space Academy events, and integration into the EO AFRICA Network for international scientific collaboration, were the benefits offered to the research projects.

Evaluation of the Proposals

62 proposals were received from research teams lead by African-European tandems from 23 African and 16 European countries. After a comprehensive evaluation process, which involved review of each proposal by at least two domain experts for 40 different criteria and scoring in 6 different categories, 26 proposals from 14 African and 9 European countries were qualified for the second round of evaluation by the Selection Committee. This included all proposals “highly recommended” by the reviewers with a minimum overall score of 75/100. Considering aspects such as scientific excellence, innovative use of digital tools, impact for fostering the use of EO data and services in Africa, and geographic representation of Africa, the Committee in collaboration with ESA and AUC awarded 15 research projects listed below for funding from 12 African and 9 European countries.

The projects are expected to start following the special EO AFRICA R&D session of the ESA’s Living Planet Symposium, which took place in Bonn on May 23-27.

	Title	Countries	Col-Pls
1.	A workflow for forecasting primary productivity and its determining climatic factors using remote sensing in the eastern Sahel region	South Africa – Hungary	Adam – Toth
2.	Applying innovative cloud computing technology for the effective management of Groundwater resources to promote SUStainable food security within the Sokoto Basin, Nigeria	Nigeria – U.K.	Oladeji – Novellino
3.	Crop Stress Monitoring in the semi-arid context of Doukkala, Morocco	Morocco – Italy	El Ghandour – Corbari
4.	DroughT impACt on the vegeTation of South African semIarid mosaiC landscapes: Implications on grass-crop-lands primary production	South Africa – Spain	Dube – Andreu
5.	Fusion of EO data for crop yield forecast in Benin and Morocco	Morocco – Germany	Brouziyne – Lehnert
6.	Improvement of Agricultural Statistics in the cotton zone of Mali thanks to the synergy of the Sentinel-1 and 2 time series	Mali – Belgium	Traore – Defourny
7.	Integration of open-source solutions with deep learning for estimating crop production in data-scarce smallholder farming areas	Ethiopia – Austria	Mengistu – Lang
8.	Mapping and Monitoring Artisanal Mining from Space	Ghana – Germany	Forkuor – Ullmann
9.	Monitoring by optical and radar satellite imagery of the level and volume of water in the lakes Buyo and Kossou dams in Côte d’Ivoire	Côte d’Ivoire – France	Kouame – Mertens
10.	Quantifying Soil Moisture from Space-based Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) and Ground-based Geophysical and Hydrological Measurements	Senegal – Spain	Djanni – Gao
11.	Rising with temperature! Reconstructing the hydroclimatic record of Lake Naivasha with Earth Observation	Kenya – Netherlands	Ongo – Salama
12.	Sentinel-1 and -2 data fusion for mapping smallholder cropping areas in southern Africa to support crop monitoring and yield forecasting	Namibia – Germany	Hamunyela – Herold
13.	SENTINELs for Cape Verde Water & Food Security Monitoring	Cabo Verde – Netherlands	Tavares – Mannaerts
14.	Towards daily maps of water hyacinth cover: exploiting synergies between Sentinel-2 and 3	South Africa – Netherlands	Shoko – Penning de Vries
15.	West Africa Lake Monitoring System	Benin – Netherlands	Belfrid – van der Kwast