– ABOUT
A 30-month partnership between Nigeria and Europe to put Based Earth Observation at the heart of agricultural decision-making.
Funded by the European Union under the Global Gateway initiative and implemented by the European Space Agency, this programme co-develops a Climate Smart Information System with the Nigerian National Space Research and Development Agency.
The project
Nigeria’s agricultural sector employs roughly a third of the country’s workforce and accounts for a quarter of its GDP — yet farmers, extension officers, and federal agencies still make most decisions without timely, locally-relevant Earth Observation data. This project changes that.
Over 38 months, the consortium will build a 50-seat EO training lab at NASRDA, deliver a structured train-the-trainer programme, co-develop and operate a Climate Smart Information System (CSIS), convene a regional conference in 2028, and transfer a complete digital archive to NASRDA at project close.
The work is grounded in seven demonstration farms across every Nigerian agro-ecological zone, from the Sudan savanna in Bauchi and Kano to the tropical rainforest of Cross River.
Why now
Climate variability is reshaping Nigerian agriculture faster than traditional advisory systems can adapt. Rainfall patterns are shifting; pests and diseases are migrating; farmers are making planting decisions on increasingly unfamiliar terrain.
Copernicus Sentinel data, paired with locally-developed AI and a multi-channel advisory system, offers a way to deliver climate-smart guidance at the speed and scale Nigeria’s farmers need, provided it’s co-developed with the institutions that will own it long-term.
The consortium
The work is led by GAF Geospatial GmbH (Germany), with partners VITO (Belgium), Ramani (Tanzania), Kanalytics Africa (Ghana), and Caribou (United Kingdom). Implementation is in collaboration with NASRDA, the National Space Research and Development Agency, Nigeria’s national space agency, which will own and operate the resulting system.
The European Space Agency is the contracting agency, and the project is funded by the European Union under the Global Gateway initiative’s Africa EU Space Partnership Programme (AESPP).
How it’s funded
This project is part of the EU’s Global Gateway strategy, the European Union’s flagship initiative for sustainable infrastructure investment in partner countries, and specifically falls under the Africa, EU Space Partnership Programme, a cooperation framework between the European Union, the African Union, and national space agencies across the continent.