Perspectives on Space Technology for Africa

1
Perspectives on Space Technology for Africas
socio-economic development

• United Nations Economic Commission for Africa
• ICT and Sciences Technology Division (ISTD)
• Makane Faye
• Officer-in-charge, e_at_pplications Section

High level conference Space for the African
Citizen 16 September 2010, Brussels
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Outline

• Introduction
• Space Technology Applications for
  socio-economic development
• UNECAs support to African countries on
  exploitation of Space technology for
  socio-economic development
• The African ICT Ministers Abuja Declaration
  Recommendations
• The Committee on Development Information, Science
  and Technology (CODIST)
• Challenges on Space Technology and Applications
  in Africa
• The Way Forward

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Introduction

• Globalization and the emerging new global economy
  put emphasis on information as an economic asset
• A major imperative in each African country is the
  commitment to deliver relevant information that
  could promote and sustain socio-economic
  development
• Within its programme of Harnessing Information
  for Development, UNECA supports Member States in
  the exploitation of spatially enabled information
  technologies for decision-making at all levels
  through advisory services, capacity building and
  development of common resources and online
  repositories.

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Space Technology Applications for
Socio-economic development

• Geospatial technology is critical to the
  development of the Knowledge Economy and an
  equitable Information Society
• Its importance lies on the fact that Location
  affects nearly everything we do in life and is
  also at the heart of some of the worlds most
  pressing problems
• Need for Africa to acquire orbital locations to
  facilitate acquisition of data development of
  suitable space applications
• Service delivery industries that depend on
  location and spatial knowledge benefit from
  reduced transaction costs, thus, leading to up
  scaling of economic activities contributing to
  socio-economic development

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Space Technology Applications for
Socio-economic development (ctd)
Examples Examples
Food Security Land cover, soil, topography, hydrography, rainfall, demographics, infrastructure, yield, production etc.
Water Supply Hydrography, topography, aquifers, waterbodies, land cover, soil types, vegetation, rainfall, etc.
Resources Management Ecosystems, biodiversity, vegetation, land cover, soils, water, wetlands, biomass etc.
Drought Rainfall, temperature, evapo-transpiration, wind, aerosols etc.

• All the information products exemplified would
  not be complete without the location attribute
• They need to be localized
• Where are the features located?
• Where are the population involved in an activity,
  vis-à-vis location of the activity?
• Who will benefit from an activity or event ? Or
  at risk? Where are they?
• Where are the markets for the products? The input
  factors?
• Where are the infrastructure elements, utilities,
  etc?
• What areas are suitable (or unsuitable) for
  specific activities or events?
• How do we move (people, products, services) from
  source to destination?

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Space Technology Applications for
Socio-economic development (ctd)
Examples (ctd) Examples (ctd)
Security and Emergency Land cover, soil chemistry, topography, geology, mining, utilities, settlements, transport infrastructure, flood, etc.
Health Planning Hospitals locations, settlements and demographics, disease vectors, environmental factors distribution, etc.
E-Services for socio-economic development Telecom, market prices, demographics, e-edcuation, e-health, e-government, e-commerce, etc.

• All the information products exemplified would
  not be complete without the location attribute
• They need to be localized
• Where are the features located?
• Where are the population involved in an activity,
  vis-à-vis location of the activity?
• Who will benefit from an activity or event ? Or
  at risk? Where are they?
• Where are the markets for the products? The input
  factors?
• Where are the infrastructure elements, utilities,
  etc?
• What areas are suitable (or unsuitable) for
  specific activities or events?
• How do we move (people, products, services) from
  source to destination?

7
More examples on use of Space Technology for for
Socio-economic development

• Various sectors of the economy benefit
  significantly from access to Spatial
  Applications, including
• Communications in general
• location/mobile services
• travel and tourism
• National defence
• Environmental modelling etc.
• 370 million Africans subscribed to mobiles in
  2009
• Most of the mobile are now embedded with spatial
  applications such as GPS and street maps
• Web-based GIS technology is also widely used in
  Africa

8
UNECA Vision on Space Technology and Applications

• Our Vision is to generate, share and disseminate
  knowledge
• By ensuring that spatial data permeates every
  aspect of society and that they are available to
  people who need them, when they need them, and in
  a form that they can use them to make decisions
  with minimal pre-processing
• By ensuring that generated information is put to
  the maximum possible uses by publicising their
  existence and making them easily available to the
  widest possible audience

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Selected on-going activities

• The African Regional Spatial Data Infrastructure
• Adopt cooperative, multi-stakeholder approach to
  production, management, and dissemination of
  spatially enabled data Regional and National
  level
• Improve regional scale development
  decision-making
• The African Geodetic Reference Frame (AFREF)
  Project
• A scientific project using modern satellite based
  positioning with aim to To determine a
  continental reference system for Africa and to
  establish continuous, permanent GNSS base
  stations to ensure that data is freely available
  to all African nations
• The Mapping Africa for Africa (MAfA) Initiative
• Based on the Durban Statement, it is a plan of
  action to provide the fundamental geo-spatial
  information for sustainable development in
  support of regional projects

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Development of Interoperability Standards The
Common Geodetic Reference (AFREF)

• Network of permanent GNSS base stations (CORS)
  covering the whole continent
• At least one in every country
• Eventually, everywhere in Africa less than 1000
  km from a base station.
• Salient Features
• 5 GPS CORS Stations being installed in African
  Sub regions
• 30 GPS Reference Stations to be installed,
  depending on availability of funds
• On-going inventory of existing and planned GNSS
  base stations in African countries
• http//geoinfo.uneca.org/afref/

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Development of Interoperability Standards The
Harmonized Administrative Boundary

• Second Administrative Level Boundary (SALB)
• Produce a comprehensive digital database of
  Second Administrative Level Boundaries
• Provide a flexible and intuitive coding scheme
  that can be applied to any country, independently
  from administrative structure
• an international borders template developed by
  the UN Cartographic Section in order to be able
  to create a global data set that is
  cross-boundary
• an editing protocol in order to insure the
  comparability between the countries
• a coding scheme for the identification of each
  administrative unit through time and space
• a metadata profile that is associated with the
  information
• a validation process of all the information by an
  official entity (generally the National Mapping
  Agency
• www.salb.org

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Creation of Regional Databases

• TheTransport Infrastructure Database (TIDB)
• The segments of the trans-African highway have
  been entered, together with proposed priority
  transport infrastructure projects of the various
  regional economic communities and specialized
  technical organizations. (http//geoinfo.uneca.org
  /afriquecentrale)
• Programme of Infrastructure Development in Africa
  (PIDA)
• The database covers all existing and planned
  infrastructure facilities in the continent. A
  compendium of maps was generated from the
  database and customized as an interactive digital
  atlas. (http//geoinfo.uneca.org/africaninfrastruc
  ture)
• The African Fiber optic connectivity data base
• Describes international Sea connectivity and
  current as well as planned connections within and
  between African countries. An African fiber optic
  map was generated. (http//geoinfo.uneca.org/downl
  oads/Fiber20Optic20Network.pdf)

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The Trans African Highways
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e-Services Delivery (Clearinghouse Services)

• To use data produced by another person/agency,
  potential users need to know
• That the data resource exists
• How the data was produced
• How to access the data
• The metadata collections are best maintained
• By the producers of the data
• As an integral part of the data production
  process
• But they should be accessible to potential users
• Always available and easy to access
• Result on-line metadata clearinghouse services
• Search and discover what exists, where and how to
  access
• Publish and advertise what you have and do
• Field level, location and other criteria-based
  searches
• http//geoinfo.uneca.org/

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e-Services Delivery (Online Mapping)

• Exploit the vast opportunities provided by the
  Web
• Make it easy and rapid to search, and access
  geospatial information from multiple locations
• Enable standards and interoperable web-based
  exploitation of Geodata
• Develop value-add products and services
• Decentralized Mapping
• Previously unthinkable map themes now common at
  demand
• Visualizing MDG Progress
• Dynamic maps and Statistics
• http//geoinfo.uneca.org

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Meeting of African ICT Ministers, August 2010

• 3rd ordinary session of the African Union ICT
  Ministers, held in Abuja, Nigeria, from 6-7
  August 2010, adopted The Abuja 2010 Declaration,
  which requests the AU Commission to, enter alia,
  
• Conduct a feasibility study on the establishment
  of the African Space Agency and develop an
  African Space Policy in cooperation with the
  Regional Economic Communities (RECs), the United
  Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA)
  and the International Telecommunications Union
  (ITU).

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Meeting of African ICT Ministers, August 2010
(ctd)

• Also the ministers endorsed the following
  recommendations from the experts
• Undertake awareness raising campaigns for policy
  makers
• Promote the use of African Regional Centres of
  Excellence to build the capacity of Member
  States
• Provide appropriate input to African members of
  the Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer
  Space (COPUOS), in order to better take into
  account Africas concerns and needs, especially
  on Disaster Management, Emergency Response and
  peaceful use of satellite imagery
• Improve communication and coordination among
  existing initiatives in African countries.

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Regional Coordination CODIST

• Committee on Development Information, Science and
  Technology
• UNECAs parliamentary body to provide technical
  advice on, and oversight over the ICT, Science
  Technology sub programme
• Reports to the African Ministers of Finance and
  Economic Development
• Meets every two years
• Official delegates are government official in
  areas of geographic information, space, ICT,
  Science and Technology
• Governments encouraged to include wide
  representation of all stakeholders in their
  delegations
• Observers from Private Sector, Academia, NGOs and
  non-African officials and industry partners

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Challenges on Space Technology Applications in
Africa

• Communication infrastructure not yet fully
  developed to support remote access to data and
  services
• Data not available at appropriate scale, and they
  are not up to date
• Human capacity lack of critical mass and
  retention of staff
• Computing resources not always available
• Awareness raising decision-makers not aware of
  space benefits
• Policy environment not yet developed

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The Way Forward

• Implement the Abuja 2010 Declaration and
  Recommendations
• African Stakeholders and decision-makers to
  capitalize on the regularly organized Committee
  on Development Information, Science and
  Technology
• UNECA technical African organizations to secure
  funding from the EU to provide technical support
  to the AU for implementing the Abuja Declaration
  and the Experts recommendations

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• Thank you
• eApplicationsSection_at_uneca.org