On July 11, 2024, Space in Africa hosted another episode of its webinar series, “Feeding Africa – Satellite Data for Food Insecurity in Africa.” The webinar provided insights into Africa’s food security challenge, how Africa is utilising space technology to address it, the innovative technologies in EO applications for food security in Africa, and immediate, data-driven measures crucial to tackling one of Africa’s most pressing issues—food security.
The webinar speakers included
- Laure Boudinaud, Geospatial Analyst, World Food Programme (Regional Bureau for West Africa)
- Edward Boamah, Technical Manager, Digital Earth Africa
- Stephen Korir, Geospatial Data Scientist, Amini
- Mustapha Iderawumi, Senior Analyst, Space in Africa (Moderator)
Check here to watch the webinar.
Key Takeaways from the Event
In his overview of the current state of food security in Africa, Edward Boamah highlighted the key challenges and potential benefits. He pointed out, “Many African countries have large proportions of their populations living in rural areas, primarily engaged in agriculture. However, the food they produce is often just enough to cater to their families. This situation, while it exposes many people to climate risks, also offers potential benefits from advancements in agriculture and environmental practices.”
Edward emphasised the importance of health observation technology, which can provide real-time data on weather patterns, crop health, and land use. He noted that food insecurity is widespread across many countries, not just isolated regions. Implementing health observation can help address these challenges by offering early warning systems for natural disasters, supporting precision agriculture for optimal resource management, and enhancing distribution and market access monitoring. He concluded by stating that while the challenges of food insecurity are substantial, leveraging authorisation technology can enable us to overcome these issues and improve the current state of food security in Africa.
When discussing the specific projects or programmes she has been involved in to enhance regional food security, Laura Boudinaud provided insights into her work with the World Food Programme (WFP). She mentioned that she has been working with the Haiti country office but previously spent several years in the Sahel region. Between 2019 and 2023, she focused on projects using observation imagery to monitor hard-to-reach areas.
Laura highlighted a project implemented in Mali that began in the central region of Mopti. Due to security restrictions and inadequate data, the project targeted a few difficult localities to access. To address this, they utilised Sentinel-2 satellite imagery to observe the impacts of insecurity, conflict, and violence on livelihoods. The imagery revealed a visible impact on farming activities in certain localities where people had stopped cultivating.
“The success of this initial project led to its expansion to 100 villages and eventually the entire Mopti region. The high-resolution imagery allowed the team to gather detailed information at the locality level, significantly improving the targeting and organisation of WFP’s emergency response efforts. Laura noted that this approach was beneficial as it provided more precise data than administrative-level data, enabling better-targeted responses. This project in Mali served as a model and was subsequently scaled up to other Sahel areas facing similar challenges and problems,” Laure concluded.
Stephen Korir, in discussing the role of remote sensing and Earth Observation (EO) data in monitoring and improving food security in Africa, emphasised the critical impact of these technologies. He started by explaining the concept of food security, which aims to ensure that all localities have sufficient food to meet their needs, aligning with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to end hunger.
Stephen noted that traditional observational techniques and statistics were used to quantify food availability in various localities. However, with the advent of remote sensing and Earth Observation, it has become easier to quantify food production. Satellite imagery and EO data enable the creation of machine learning models for crop type detection, allowing for the discrimination between different crops grown in a region. Once crop types are identified, critical estimations or predictions can be made about crop production at various administrative levels.
He explained that accurate crop types and production data help understand regional food balances, determining whether a country has a surplus or deficit. This information is vital for managing food distribution and ensuring food security. Stephen also highlighted the role of remote sensing in crop monitoring. With EO data, crops can be monitored from planting to harvest, enabling early detection of issues such as pests, diseases, and nutrient deficiencies. This early detection allows timely mitigation strategies, such as applying fertilisers and targeted treatments, to address problems and improve crop health.
Edward Boamah, when addressing the impact of climate change on smallholder and large-scale farmers across different African regions, highlighted effective strategies for mitigating these effects. He emphasised that one of the proven strategies is utilising EO technology. This technology contributes valuable data and insights essential for understanding and mitigating the impact of climate change on food security in Africa. Edward provided an example from Digital Earth Africa, which offers services and products covering the entire African continent, such as the NDVI anomaly, crop masks, and fractional cover data. By leveraging and integrating this data with climate information, stakeholders can make informed decisions to promote sustainable agricultural practices and enhance resilience to climate variability, ensuring food security for vulnerable populations.
He shared a specific instance from Kenya, where a user integrated these datasets into a mobile app that farmers can use to monitor climate conditions in their areas. This data is essential for early warning systems, alerting farmers and policymakers about potential floods, droughts, and other extreme weather conditions. These alerts enable timely responses, such as adjusting planting schedules, implementing water management strategies, and activating disaster preparedness plans. This is crucial because crops can fail without adequate rainfall or water, severely affecting yields. Edward underscored that utilising EO technology plays a significant role in enhancing food security across Africa. The availability of such technologies and their practical application in monitoring vegetation and climate conditions can significantly aid decision-making processes, helping to mitigate the adverse effects of climate change on agriculture.
When asked about geo-targeting and its role in improving food security in Africa, Laura Boudinaud provided an insightful overview. She explained that geo-targeting involves using geographical data to more precisely assess and address food insecurity. This approach is precious in informing humanitarian responses and estimating the number of people needing assistance. Laura described a specific project that utilised Sentinel-2 imagery to highlight cropland abandonment. This project was integrated into two main areas. Firstly, it informed the food security national exercises organised in West and Central African countries. These exercises are crucial for estimating the number of people requiring assistance and organising the humanitarian response.
Secondly, the geographical data from the project played a significant role in WFP’s emergency responses conducted throughout the year. She highlighted the challenge of accurately knowing where to organise responses and distribute aid. The high-resolution data from Sentinel-2 imagery provided a more granular level of information, which was instrumental in planning and implementing responses.
Laura gave a concrete example from 2020 in Mali, where the project detected significant cropland abandonment in certain localities. This information allowed the WFP to plan and implement responses as early as March, three months ahead of the lean season. By targeting communities at risk due to halted farming activities, the WFP could organise better and focus its efforts. In Mali, around 70,000 people were explicitly targeted using the results of this geo-targeting analysis in conjunction with other information. She concluded by emphasising the value of adding this additional layer of information to humanitarian efforts, which would significantly improve the efficiency and effectiveness of responses to food insecurity in Africa.
When asked to highlight some innovative approaches or technologies that hold the most promise for addressing food security issues in Africa, Stephen Korir identified several vital advancements. He first mentioned precision farming, emphasising its role in optimising available resources for better yields. Precision farming involves understanding soil conditions, including nutrient levels and water content, critical for determining crop yields.
Stephen explained that precision farming starts with soil analysis to identify nutrient levels and water content. After planting, monitoring becomes essential. Technologies like GPS trackers help get accurate field dimensions and remote sensing aids in crop monitoring. This process includes creating productivity maps that show how different parts of a farm perform, revealing spatial variability in nutrients due to factors like fertilisation issues, leaching, or slope. “Once productivity maps are created, zoning helps identify low and high-productivity areas. Targeted fertilisation can be applied to underperforming areas, and pesticides can be used more efficiently. This targeted approach optimises resource use, enhancing overall farm productivity,” he explained.
Stephen also highlighted the role of generative AI and foundation models in improving food security. Based on large EO datasets, foundation models can learn underlying patterns through self-supervised training. These models create generalised representations, or embeddings, which can be fine-tuned with minimal training data for specific applications like crop type mapping. Unlike traditional crop detection models, foundation models require less data, making them more efficient. Furthermore, Stephen mentioned the importance of extension services and advisory systems. In many African countries, the ratio of extension officers to farmers is meagre, hindering information flow, especially in climate change. Innovations in extension services can bridge this gap by customising information delivery based on farmers’ profiles and capabilities. This ensures that EO data and other relevant information reach farmers in an understandable and actionable form.
Kindly tune in to our YouTube page to watch the entire session and learn more about the various innovative solutions available to monitor and improve Africa’s agriculture processes, ensuring the continent’s food security.