Towards an Effective Access to Environmental Information for Africa

Within the African Monitoring of the Environment for Sustainable Development (AMESD) project, a contract was kicked off at the beginning of January this year, aiming to replace the 52 EUMETCast stations, called PUMA stations, already deployed and to install 47 new EUMETCast stations, called AMESD stations. This activity will secure the operational access of African countries to EUMETSAT data and improved data processing for various meteorological applications as well as provide effective access to environmental data and products.

Launched in 2007, the African Monitoring of the Environment for Sustainable Development (AMESD) project, funded by the European Union under the European Development Fund programme, is the precursor of the extension of GMES to Africa. Scheduled to run to 2012, AMESD is managed by the African Union Commission in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The first AMESD Forum took place in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo, on 1-4 December 2009, on the theme "Towards a Pan African Partnership and Networking for the monitoring of the Environment by Satellite in Africa".

Later, at the beginning of January 2010, an activity to secure access to key Earth Observation information was launched at the African Union Commission premises. Thanks to this activity, which is part of the AMESD project, the National Meteorological Services in sub-Saharan Africa and regional institutions will benefit from the replacement of the 52 EUMETCast stations already deployed (called PUMA stations, the installation of which began in 2002). The AMESD programme will replace all their PCs and upgrade the software packages for the visualisation and interpretation of the data. This activity will ensure the sustainable and long-term access to EUMETSAT data by the African meteorological community, allowing it to fully benefit from the extensive coverage of Africa by EUMETSAT satellites.

Additionally, the activity includes the installation of 47 new EUMETCast stations (one per sub-Saharan African country) which will provide African countries with effective access to various environmental data and products, including from AMESD. These new stations, called AMESD stations, will be installed at the environment, agriculture or water management ministries. The five AMESD Regional Implementation Centres are operationally producing various environmental products based on Earth Observation data.

Thanks to this operation, all sub-Saharan African countries will have two operational stations to access environmental data in real time from various data providers all over the world. The key information on the state of the environment in the African continent will contribute to its sustainable development.