Intergovernmental organisation Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) Africa is attending the Group on Earth Observations (GEO) Week and Ministerial Summit 2023 (being held at the Cape Town International Convention Centre) as an observer agency. “We’ve been asked to synergise with other Earth observation initiatives, and GEO is one of them, and a very big one, in fact,” explains GMES Africa national resources management and monitoring policy expert Brice Montfraix, in an exclusive interview with Engineering News.

GMES Africa is a joint initiative between the European Commission (of the European Union, or EU) and the African Union Commission, and is based in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The agreement creating it was signed in 2009, and GMES Africa actually started operations in 2016. It is currently focused on providing the African Union (AU), African governments and other end-users, with usable, value-added, satellite data in two broad areas, namely lands and waters, and coastal and marine. The data supplied, however, has proved valuable in just about every area of AU and member governmental operations, ranging from health to mining to safety and security.

“The data the satellites produce is only the first layer,” he elucidates. “It has to be processed to provide useful data to customers. Everywhere, the market is big, but it is especially big in Africa. And everything we are showcasing at GEO has been done by Africans. Africans have determined what data, in which formats, the continent needs. Europe has no role in this. Europe’s role has been to fund it.”

GMES Africa is now in its second phase. Phase 1 and Phase 2 have been funded by the European Commission to the amount of €60-million. Further, all data provided by the EU’s Copernicus Earth observation satellite constellation is provided free. But GMES Africa is not restricted to using Copernicus data.

GMES Africa is implemented through eight consortia spread across the continent, directly involving some 200 institutions and indirectly benefitting about 800 more. The initiative has become the backbone of Africa’s space policy.

“The AU established an African Space Agency a year ago, in Cairo,” he points out. “GMES Africa has been a key element in developing the concepts and objectives of the space agency. GMES Africa will be incorporated into the space agency and actually provide it with an institutional and personnel framework. The African Space Agency has three pillars – Earth observation applications; geopositioning, that is, the provision of the most accurate location information possible (the more accurate, the more valuable); and the broadcasting of that geolocalised satellite data, to ensure the rapid and easy distribution of the data to wherever it’s needed.”