Over three days, 24 participants — from leading global and national institutions — representing 12 countries across three regions in Africa discussed how satellite data and innovations in geospatial technology are being applied in agriculture. This diverse group of professionals brought a wealth of experience and perspectives, united by a shared mission: harnessing EO and in situ agricultural data to drive sustainable development in Africa. They focused especially on the challenges that remain for scaling up these solutions and how to ensure that these technologies directly benefit farmers and policymakers. The event was co-organized by the World Bank Group Data Academy, the Center for Development Data, the 50X20230 Initiative, and the European Space Agency (ESA) through its Global Development Assistance programme.
Why is integrating EO technology with in situ agricultural survey data so transformative for agriculture?
Imagine being able to monitor crops, forecast droughts, and plan interventions — all from space. That’s the promise of this technology, which enables the combination of satellite imagery with ground-level survey data for a comprehensive, real-time view of what’s happening in the fields. For Africa, for instance, where agriculture is the backbone of economies and livelihoods, this integration is a game-changer: it means increased productivity, greater food security, and more job opportunities, especially for youth and people in rural communities. The participation of staff from Rome-based international institutions (trainees included experts from the Food and Agriculture Organization [FAO], as well as the International Fund for Agricultural Development [IFAD]) into the workshop underscored the relevance of these efforts not just for Africa, but as a model for other regions.
The ESA Global Development Assistance (GDA) program took center stage, demonstrating how satellite EO data can accelerate and amplify development impact in international operations. In this context, two key ESA initiatives aimed at empowering development stakeholders and countries in leveraging EO for agriculture were presented: the WorldCereal and Sen4Stat projects. WorldCereal focuses on developing an open-source, cloud-based system for local to global crop monitoring at the field scale. Having timely access to accurate crop type maps is an essential prerequisite for many downstream agricultural monitoring applications. As such, WorldCereal allows anyone to generate fully customized crop type maps tuned for their area, season and crop types of interest, leveraging EO data from the Copernicus Sentinel missions.
On the other hand, Sen4Stat is specifically designed at helping National Statistical Offices (NSOs) integrate EO data into their agricultural statistics workflows. Its goal is to improve the accuracy, timeliness, and policy relevance of agricultural data by demonstrating and co-developing EO-based products, as well as best practices for survey protocol. In summary, while WorldCereal aims to increase accessibility to innovative and operational EO-based crop type mapping tools for the wider agricultural monitoring community, Sen4Stat is tailored to help governments and statistical offices improve their data collection and reporting using EO technology.