ESA EO AFRICA R&D funds 17 African-European research teams in the field of EO applications

This announcement by ESA marks the end of a process launched last September in collaboration with the AUC. The 17 selected research projects will involve institutions from 11 African countries and 9 European countries and will address crop management, rangeland, forestry, floods, in Western, Eastern and Southern Africa




EO AFRICA stands for African Framework for Research Innovation, Communities and Applications in Earth Observation. EO AFRICA fosters an African-European R&D partnership, facilitating the sustainable adoption of the Earth Observation and related space technology in Africa – following an African user driven approach with a long-term (>10 years) vision for the digital era in Africa.

The EO AFRICA R&D Facility address African research challenges through the funding of 12-month collaborative projects between African & European research partners, which are intended mainly to facilitate a scientific cooperation among the 2 continents and to build on ongoing research activities. 

The winners benefit of a research budget of EUR 25.000/per project and ICT infrastructure & technical/scientific support, 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.  

The first call resulted in the awarding of 15 research projects from 12 African and 9 European countries, dealing with water scarcity and food security, https://www.eoafrica-rd.org/research/research-projects-2022-2023/; and now the second call, 17 research Project from 11 African countries and 9 European countries, https://www.eoafrica-rd.org/research/research-projects-2023-2024/.

ESA and AUC are already working to synergize some activities of respective programmes, EO Africa and GMES and Africa. Together, they have set up hackathons, they are preparing a summer school for 2023, they provide training to various users - and this will also be the case this year during the GMES and Africa forum in November 2023, they join their forces to assess calls for Research Proposals (22 selected),  or calls for African Research Fellowships (4 African researchers will work in 2023 at the ESA-ESRIN in Frascati), https://eo4society.esa.int/2022/12/02/arf2023/

Source, https://www.eoafrica-rd.org/announcing-the-eo-africa-rd-research-projects-awarded-proposals-second-call/

About the EO Africa R&D Research Calls, https://www.eoafrica-rd.org/research/

Link, https://gmes4africa.blogspot.com/2022/09/esa-eo-africa-r-facility-call-for-research-proposals-2023.html