Transcript Mr Makane FAYE

Perspectives on Space Technology for Africa’s
socio-economic development
United Nations Economic Commission for Africa
ICT and Sciences & Technology Division (ISTD)
Makane Faye
Officer-in-charge, e@pplications Section
High level conference « Space for the African Citizen »
16 September 2010, Brussels
Outline
Introduction
Space Technology & Applications for socio-economic development
UNECA’s 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 socioeconomic 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.
www.uneca.org
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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
world’s 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

Food Security
Land cover, soil, topography,
hydrography, rainfall, demographics,
infrastructure, yield, production etc.
Water Supply
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?
Hydrography, topography, aquifers,
waterbodies, land cover, soil types,
vegetation, rainfall, etc.
Resources
Management

All the information products exemplified
would not be complete without the location
attribute
Ecosystems, biodiversity, vegetation,
land cover, soils, water, wetlands, biomass
etc.
Drought
Rainfall, temperature, evapotranspiration, wind, aerosols etc.
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Space Technology & Applications for
Socio-economic development (ctd)
Examples (ctd)
Security and
Emergency
Land cover, soil chemistry, topography,
geology, mining, utilities, settlements,
transport infrastructure, flood, etc.
Health
Planning


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?
Hospitals locations, settlements and
demographics, disease vectors,
environmental factors distribution, etc.
E-Services
Telecom, market prices, demographics, e-
for socio-
edcuation, e-health, e-government, e-
economic
commerce, etc.
development
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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
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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
www.uneca.org
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Creation of Regional Databases

TheTransport Infrastructure Database (TIDB)


Programme of Infrastructure Development in Africa (PIDA)


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)
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/africaninfrastructure)
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/downloads/Fiber%20Optic%20Network.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 criteriabased 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).
www.uneca.org
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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 Africa’s 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.
www.uneca.org
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Regional Coordination: CODIST


Committee on Development Information, Science and Technology
UNECA’s parliamentary body to provide technical advice on, and oversight
over the ICT, Science & Technology sub programme



Meets every two years
Official delegates are government official in areas of geographic
information, space, ICT, Science and Technology


Reports to the African Ministers of Finance and Economic Development
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
[email protected]
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