AfriCultuReS

Status

Clôturé

Duration of the project

5 years (2018 – 2022)

Themes

Food security

Remote sensing

Agriculture 

Capacity Building

Decision making support

Total budget

8,532,000 € including 327,500 € for the OSS

Beneficiaries
  • Decision makers
  • Technical teams (experts and technicians) from agriculture and water resources, weather, environment national institutions
  • Farmers
  • Researchers and students
  • Insurance companies
  • Agrifood or agribusiness companies
  • General public
Countries concerned
South Africa, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Mozambique, Niger, Rwanda, Tunisia

Enhancing food security in African agricultural systems with the support of remote sensing

AfriCultuReS is a regional project funded by the European Union (H2020) and implemented in eight (08) African countries by a consortium that includes 17 African and European organizations and universities.

Main Objective:

To set up an integrated surveillance and early warning system to support decision-making in agriculture and food security in Africa.

At the regional level (Africa), the consortium has developed an Agricultural Geospatial Decision Support System (accessible via this link: https://africultures-platform.eu), which harnesses Earth Observation (EO) resources in support of food security decision-making. The system provides access to a great deal of operational products and services related to seven (07) topics: Climate, Agriculture, Drought, Land, Livestock, Water and Weather. It will help improve the services provided by current monitoring and early warning systems in Africa.

At the national level (Tunisia), the project has developed useful thematic resources and geo-spatial tools for decision support in the agricultural sector and its related sectors (geospatial databases, detailed crop maps, national geoportal, etc.). In the project design, Tunisia represents the typical Mediterranean cultivation and production system in North Africa. The activities of the project in Tunisia are coordinated by the Sahara and Sahel Observatory (OSS) in close collaboration with three (03) national reference institutions involved in the development of remote sensing products in support of the monitoring of agricultural campaigns and food security: The National Center for Mapping and Remote Sensing - CNCT, The National Research Institute for Rural Engineering, Water and Forests - INRGREF and The National Observatory for Agriculture - ONAGRI.

 

Financial partners
  • European Commission - EC
Technical partners
  • Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (GR)
  • Centre for GIS and Remote Sensing, Univ. of Rwanda
  • Centre for Remote Sensing and GIS, University of Ghana
  • Centre Régional AGRHYMET (NE)
  • DRAXIS Environmental S.A. (GR)
  • Euardo Mondlane University (MZ)
  • GeoSAS (ET)
  • GMV Aerospace and Defence S.A.U. (ES) - leader
  • HCP International (NL)
  • LocateIT (KE)
  • Scuola di Ingegneria Aerospaziale. Sapienza University of Rome
  • South African National Space Agency
  • Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute (SE)
  • University of Leeds (UK)
  • University of Sheffield (UK)
Timeline

Kick off meeting

22-24 November 2017

First Steering Committee

19-20 April 2018

National restitution workshop of the thematic studies and brainwork on end users’ needs

29-30 October 2019

Virtual Training Workshop on Operational Modeling of Wheat Growth and Yield Estimation

20-22 April 2020

National workshop for the presentation of the project results

5-6 December 2020

National workshop for the presentation of the project poducts and achievements in Tunisia

2-3 December 2021

National training workshop on the use of the AfriCultuReS platform to support the agricultural campaigns monitoring in Tunisia

1-2 September 2022

Key Achievements
  • Geoportal: decision support platform
  • Policy Brief on Earth Observation for Food Security in Africa
  • Advocacy for decision-makers on the potential of remote sensing for agriculture
  • More than 500 people trained in agricultural modeling and the use of geospatial tools to support the agricultural campaigns monitoring
  • Contribution to the production of scientific articles relating to the EO promotion for agriculture
  • Preparatory thematic studies: Survey on the needs of end users in Tunisia; Statistical estimates of agricultural production: classic vs. remote sensing approaches; Agricultural systems in Tunisia: risks and socio-economic aspects; Operational modeling of crop growth and yield estimation.
  • Agricultural model for forecasting agricultural yields in Tunisia.
  • Land cover map of Tunisia and its technical notice (10m resolution)
  • Detailed crop map for pilot governorates (10m resolution)
  • Crop geospatial databases at pilot project areas (2018 - 2022) and metadata notes.