1. Building Capacity for Land Cover Mapping in Africa
World Bank
Land and Poverty Conference
March 26, 2015
Jean Parcher
Project Manager
U.S. Department of the Interior,
International Technical Assistance Program

2. Challenges in Africa
Global and regional – do they meet national needs?
Land use vs. land cover data
Lack of data sharing and spatial data infrastructure
Multiple donors providing capacity - is it coordinated?
Low priority for national government funding

3. Land Cover in Malawi (March 2014) Assessment of Land Cover Mapping in Malawi Existing Data and Institutional Factors Final Report   Tom Miewald (USFWS) and Phoebe Oduour (RCRMD) Supported by USAID GCC and Dept. of Interior

4. Opportunities
Free and open satellite data (Landsat series, Sentinels, and Google Earth Engine)
Regional Center expertise:
RCMRD, Nairobi (SERVIR hub)
CSIR, South Africa
Agrhymet, Niger
RECTAS, Nigeria
Group on Earth Observations
AfriGEOSS
Working Group on Land Cover for Africa
UNFCCC GHG Inventory
National requirements for land use change statistics
UNREDD Forest Inventory
USFS, USGS, FAO
Agrhymet - Created in 1974, AGRHYMET is a specialized agency of the Permanent Inter-State Committee against Drought in the Sahel (CILSS) of thirteen countries are: Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde,Chad, Ivory Coast, Gambia, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Mali, Mauritania , Niger, Senegal and Togo.
The REGIONAL CENTRE FOR TRAINING IN AEROSPACE SURVEYS (RECTAS) was established in 1972 under the auspices of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) as an educational “one-stop” solution institution that trains highly skilled manpower in the science and technology of geospatial information. RECTAS is located within the campus of Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria. The Centre is a joint project of African countries, the participating countries at the moment are: Benin, Burkina, Cameroon, Ghana, Mali, Niger, Nigeria and Senegal.
The Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) in South Africa is one of the leading scientific and technology research, development and implementation organisations in Africa. It undertakes directed research and development for socio-economic growth.
he Regional Centre for Mapping of Resources for Development (RCMRD) was established in Nairobi – Kenya in 1975 under the auspices of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) and the then Organization of African Unity (OAU), today African Union (AU). RCMRD is an inter-governmental organization and currently has 20 Contracting Member States in the Eastern and Southern Africa Regions; Botswana, Burundi, Comoros, Ethiopia, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Mauritius, Namibia, Rwanda, Seychelles, Somali, South Africa, South Sudan, Sudan, Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

5. Working Group on Land Cover for Africa
Launched November 2013 at Addis Ababa, Ethiopia at GSDI and Africa GEOSS
Website
Executive Board
Eastern Africa - Dr. Hussein Farah, Chair, RCMRD
Northern Africa – Dr. Kamal Labbassi, Chouaib Doukkali Univ.
Southern Africa – Bulelwa Semoli, National Geospatial Information
Indian Ocean – Solofo Rakotondraompiana, University of Antananarivo
Central Africa – Aboubakar Mambima Ndjougui, Gabon Space Agency
Western Africa – Keita Mahamadou, RECTAS
Major Tasks in work:
Inventory of Land Cover datasets
Methods for accuracy and validation of land cover data for Africa
Launching of Technical Advisory Group – GEO 2014 Plenary
Co-chairs – Amadou Dieye – Senegal, Jean Parcher – U.S.
Bimonthly (every 2 months) conference call

6. Land Cover for Climate LC4Climate
US Department of the Interior (Science, Environment, Natural Resources) International Technical Assistance Program
Funding from USAID Global Climate Change program
Coordination with UNREDD (Silva Carbon), US EPA, and USGS Global Land Cover
Earth Observations Land Cover Capacity Building
Build capacity to generate 30 meter resolution land cover data from Landsat imagery
Host regional and national capacity training on interpreting, and utilizing land cover data for climate change reporting requirements (GHG, UNREDD+, LEDS).
Facilitate interagency cooperation to build consolidated data for multiple uses

7. Role for LC4Climate Regional Coordination support Technical expertise
GEO Working Group on Land Cover for Africa
Technical expertise
Image preprocessing (USGS)
Remote sensing algorithms for land cover mapping (USGS, FWS)
Land use change data needs for GHG inventories (EPA, USGS, FWS, FAO)
Data providers
Satellite imagery
Regional land cover
Capacity training
East Africa
West Africa
Support for south to south collaboration –South Africa CSIR, RCMRD

8. Activities - Africa Regional Coordination
International Global Land Cover Workshop for Africa
Co-hosted with RCMRD, UNEP, and Tsinghua Univ., June 25-27th, Nairobi, Kenya.
Released Final Statement – GEO WGLCA
Over 100 participants both from Africa, Europe, Asia, and US
Eastern Africa participatory workshop to evaluate USGS 30 meter land cover dataset in cooperation with RCMRD (March 2014)
Technical exchange with USGS EROS, South Africa CSIR , RCMRD, Univ. of Maryland, to improve image processing methodology and land cover change processes (July 2014)

9. Eastern and Southern 30M Land Cover
(1) Closed Forest, (2) Open Forest, (3) Shrub lands, (4) Grasslands, (5) Croplands, (6) Barren, (7) Wetlands, and (8) Water Bodies
South Sudan, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Tanzania, Malawi, Mozambique, Swaziland, Lesotho, and Kenya

10. Planned Activities - Africa
West Africa Land Cover Change technical workshops using FAO Collect Earth
Series of 3 workshops to support land cover and land use change reporting requirements for UNFCCC GHG emission reports in collaboration with FAO (April – May 2015)
Senegal (Burkina Faso, Cape Verde)
Ivory Coast (Togo, Benin)
Ghana
GEO Working Group on Land Cover for Africa
Complete the land cover inventory for publication on the web
Support for the Technical Advisory Group Validation report
Lake Victoria Basin Regional Land Cover Workshop
In cooperation with East Africa PREPARED Initiative, RCMRD, FEWSNET, USGS (July 2015)
East Africa countries – Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi
Institutional and Technical Capacity Building Workshop in Malawi to support PERFORM initiative

11. FAO Collect Earth
Free and Open Source Tools for Image Processing and Data Analysis
Customizable data collection with direct linkages to imagery in:
Google Earth Engine
Microsoft/Bing Maps Imagery
Nokia HERE maps
Land Cover/Land Use collection
Sampling approach or wall to wall supervised classification
Customizable interface
Multi-lingual
Output directly links to ALU tool
Capacity training by FAO in 18 countries
Direct ownership of data and project
Point-based LULUCF sampling
using multiple sources of free imagery
Multi-temporal analysis with 40 years of Landsat data
U.S. Department of the Interior
International Technical Assistance Program (ITAP)

12. Recommendations Project based capacity building
Capitalize on satellite imagery cloud based systems
Build on local knowledge of the environment and drivers of change
Allow users to define their capacity needs
Increase cooperation between donors to build capacity
Provide resources to implement south to south technical cooperation to build communities of practice
Strongly encourage open data policies for all doner funded projects