KSA and GEOGLAM team meet to advance agricultural monitoring in East Africa

The Kenya Space Agency (KSA) has met with the Group on Earth Observations Global Agricultural Monitoring (GEOGLAM) team to discuss ways to advance agricultural monitoring in East Africa. The meeting, held on the sidelines of the AfriGEO Symposium at the Regional Centre for Mapping of Resources for Development (RCMRD) in Nairobi, Kenya, aimed to follow up on the East Africa Learning Exchange workshop hosted by GEOGLAM and other stakeholders in March 2024.

During the meeting, KSA updated GEOGLAM on its ongoing work in support of the agriculture sector, including a pilot project with Microsoft AI for Good and Clark Centre for Geospatial Analytics (Clark CGA) to generate a land use land cover map for a county in Kenya. The project will utilize AI models developed by the COPERNICUS4GEOGLAM team to produce crop type maps for the county.

The workflow and products generated from this project will be shared with the Ministry of Agriculture and the County department of Agriculture for decision support. The ultimate goal is to lay the foundation for targeted farmer advisory services in the future, once the model products have been validated.

The meeting was attended by Gilliams Sven, Program Director, and Esther Makabe, Capacity Development Coordinator, for GEOGLAM, while KSA was represented by Charles Mwangi, Acting Director, Space Applications and Utilization, and Jacques Matara, Acting Deputy Director, Space Research and Innovation.

By:  Kanto Okanta