On 10 June the Group on Earth Observations (GEO) announced the 21 projects from 17 developing countries to receive $1.5 million worth of cloud services under the Earth Observation Cloud Credits Program. As part of the Amazon Sustainability Data Initiative (ASDI) this credit program will drive the sustainable development of a wide range of earth observation applications.

AfriCultuRes (Enhancing Food Security in African Agricultural Systems with the support of Remote Sensing), presented by the South African National Space Agency (SANSA), was one of the projects selected for the program.

The AfriCultuReS project, carried out by a GMV-led consortium, sets out to design, implement and operationally validate an integrated monitoring, analysis and early-warning system to contribute towards the improvement of food security in Africa. AfriCultuReS, a four-year, European Union Horizon-2020-funded project (contract 774652) worth 8.5-million euros, kicked off in late 2017. The consortium is made up by eight African and nine European organizations, each of them a leader in its respective field like climatology, meteorology, crop modeling and monitoring, information technology, social sciences and earth observation.

AfriCultuReS meets small farmers’ need for trustworthy information, hard to come by otherwise. This will allow them to improve farming decision-making procedures to safeguard output by means of risk management, helping them to become more adaptable and resilient to climate change. AfriCultuReS recognizes from the outset that reaching small farmers one by one calls for an effort that is beyond project resources. Without losing sight of the end beneficiary, therefore, the project tackles service provision by means of “agri-aggregators” like national or regional governments, agricultural extension services, farming cooperatives, input suppliers or banks, to name only some.

The project will draw on data from the Sentinel satellites of the European Copernicus program, together with field data, climate models, meteorological models and crop forecasting models. This award therefore represents a huge boost to the project, since access to large datasets and cloud services will slash costs and time and overcome many of the technical hurdles balking service provision.

But this essential cloud capacity is not the only boon; to this must be added the subsidy and technological support included in this award. There is therefore no doubt that AfriCultuReS has taken a huge stride forward in its goal of providing the necessary information for sustainable agriculture, management of natural resources, conservation of biodiversity and reduction of poverty in Africa. AfriCultuReS will thus do its bit towards the following United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals; Number 1, No Poverty; Number 2, Zero Hunger; Number 13, Climate Action; and Number 15, Life on Land, among others.

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