Tunis hosts the Kick-off Meeting of the GMES and Africa project for northern Africa

The Sahara and Sahel Observatory (OSS), an African-based intergovernmental organization based in Tunis, kick starts the launching workshop of the project "Earth Observation for Sustainable Land and Water Management in North Africa - EO- SLWM / North Africa "- as part of the GMES & AFRICA program.

The two days (10-11 October 2018) kick off  workshop aims to introduce the GMES and Africa project approach, planned activities and expected results. It will allow broader stakeholders to establish operational planning for national and regional activities, and to agree on technical approaches and implementation strategies for project activities.

The kick off meeting brings together representatives of the GMES and Africa project's partner institutions in the northern Africa region. These include: Agence Spatiale Algérienne - ASAL (Algeria), Desert Research Center - DRC (Egypt), LCRSSS (Libya), Centre Royal de Télédétection Spatiale - CRTS (Morocco), University of Nouakchott (Mauritania) and the Centre National de la Cartographie et de la Télédétection - CNCT (Tunisia), as well as Regional Center for Remote Sensing of North Africa States - CRTEAN and Centre Régional Africain des sciences et technologies de l 'espace en langue française - CRASTE-LF, for the sub-regional level.

The EO- SLWM / North Africa project, coordinated by OSS, aims to provide Earth Observation data and technology-based products and services to support decision-making in the field of sustainable management of natural resources and water.

More specifically, the GMES and Africa Project in Northern Africa aims to:

• Develop and sustain decision support services;
• Boost regional cooperation and promote the exchange of know-how; 
• Build capacity and raise awareness among all partners and users. 

The GMES and Africa Support Programme is the crystallization of the longstanding cooperation between the European Commission and the African Union Commission. The Programme uses and adapts the Copernicus Programme data and services to the African context. Its overall objective is to promote more sustainable management of natural resources by building technical and institutional capacity in Africa to use Earth Observation data for policy-making. In the implementation agreement, the African Union Commission is the ‘delegated authority’ responsible for the management of the programme.

More Information on the OSS Website



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