Objectives

This Action builds on the overall objectives of the GMES and Africa Initiative for a long-term EU-Africa cooperation on space science and technology to enable the two continents to jointly solve and address global challenges and promote sustainable development under the Copernicus programme. 

The objectives of the "GMES and Africa Support Programme" are as followed: 

• General objective: To promote more sustainable management of natural resources by improving the decision-making process through the provision of additional pertinent information.  

• Specific objective: To improve African policy-makers' and planners' capacities to design, implement, and monitor national, regional and continental policies and to promote sustainable management of natural resources through the use of EO data and derived information.  

In order to achieve the above objectives activities were organized in 4 pillars, namely:

1. Data and Infrastructures: 
• i.installation and maintenance of new and existing eStations; and 
• ii.strengthening data access and intra-African collaborative actions. 
2. Products and Services: 
• i. consolidation of existing MESA services; 
• ii. extension of running MESA applications to other regions of the Continent; and 
• iii. design and development of new applications.
3. Education and Training: 
• i. knowledge sharing; 
• ii. establishment of cooperation frameworks with Universities and work with the Pan-African University (PAU);   
• iii. capacity development on Earth Observation for integrated decision-making; and  
• iv. establishment of virtual networking platforms.  
4. Outreach and awareness raising: 
• i. facilitation of continental and regional Policy and priorities alignment; 
• ii. strengthening of awareness and outreach of Earth Observation among stakeholders including the private sector, policymakers, and the public; and  
• iii. usage of traditional and social media in support of GMES and Africa Support Programme.  

This first phase, called the "GMES and Africa Support Programme", or simply the ‘Programme’ consists of three contracts signed by the European Union Commission and managed by the EU Delegation to the African Union in Addis Ababa (Ethiopia), namely: 

• A Delegation Agreement with the African Union Commission, and 
• An Administrative Arrangement with JRC, and 
• A Technical Assistance contract implemented by a consortium led by GAF A.G. (Germany). 

All three contracts started in January 2017 and will end by December 2020.