By Dele Ogbodo
Efforts toward Africa’s environmental sustainability and development gained traction during the week in Abuja, Nigeria as Space Scientists from across West African region under the aegis of African Union Commission (AUC): converged for the Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) & Africa under the Africa space policy and strategy drive.
Experts at the three-day meeting in Abuja, include: GMES and Africa Support Programme Coordinator, Dr. Tidiane Quattara, the DG, Centre D’ Suivi Ecologique (CSE), Prof. Cheikh Mbow, the DG, National Space Research and Development Agency (NASRDA), Dr. Halilu Shaba and Dr. Benjamin Botive, University of Ghana among others.
By harnessing the knowledge and resources offered by GMES & Africa, Quattara, added can address the pressing challenges of climate change, biodiversity loss and sustainable development in Africa.
The conference which stakeholders said was apt is in response to the continent’s need to mitigate the effects of climate change occasioned by recent flooding and to tackle emerging transnational crime and insecurity through Earth Observation-based services.
Delivering the key note address at the 3-Day conference which ended on Wednesday today 20th, September, Quattara, acknowledged that the workshop serves as a crucial platform for collaboration, knowledge sharing, and fostering regional partnerships.
According to him, it is through such gatherings that Africa can strengthen its commitment towards sustainable development and the protection of our invaluable natural resources.
He underscored that the 3-day interactions will reinforce the African spirit and concretize actions of working together towards an integrated, prosperous and peaceful Africa as stated in the Agenda 2063, which is the compass for all the 55 African countries.
“What should we do together? Why should we do it together? And how will we perform efficiently together?” Quattara, said.
“I would like to take a moment to acknowledge the remarkable contributions of University of Ghana and the Centre de Suivi Écologique (CSE) of Senegal in the development of vital services for the Western and Northern Africa regions.
“The CSE is developing services focused on wetlands and flooding management, which spans across the 15 Western African countries.
“This initiative provides us with a comprehensive understanding of these ecosystems, enabling us to implement targeted conservation and civil security and protection efforts and to ensure their sustainable utilization.” Quattara said.
He commended the University of Ghana for its strides in advancing 3 critical coastal and marine services covering Western Africa and being expanding to Northern Africa, adding that the Marine and Maritime, Fisheries, and Coastal Services developed by University of Ghana are instrumental in promoting the sustainable use and management of our marine resources and in saving life of thousands of traditional fishermen as well as their assets and material.
These services, he said offer invaluable insights and tools to enhance our coastal resilience, foster sustainable livelihoods, and protect our marine ecosystems for future generations, he said.
AUC, according to him, places great importance on the outcomes of these services developed by University of Ghanan and the Centre de Suivi Écologique of Senegal.
Quattara, said: “We expect them to serve as catalysts for transformative action, empowering the member states and specifically the beneficiary end-users to make informed decisions that positively impact our environment, economy, and society at large.
“We recognize the critical role of policy-makers and stakeholders’ engagement in driving impactful change. It is through collaboration, knowledge exchange, and cross-fertilization of ideas that we can collectively tackle complex environmental issues.
“We know that the University of Ghana and the Centre de Suivi of Senegal are national institutions. But we made the challenges that these 2 institutions will continue engaging all other institutions from all other regional countries as they have done it during the phase 1 of the GMES & Africa programme from 2017 to 2021.
“In line with our commitment to gender equality and inclusivity, I am proud to see that during this workshop UoG and CSE are giving opportunities to Women in GMES & Africa initiative to have their words. This commitment to gender consideration underscores our dedication to promoting equitable opportunities and empowering women in the realm of environmental conservation and sustainable development.
“We want to hear from our Western African GMES & Africa stakeholders, the concrete actions and the way forward with respect to human capital development and utilisation. We are here today because someone, yesterday, gave us our chance when we were students, looking for our first job, etc.
“Let give more opportunities to our youth for the better future of Africa. Yes, our youth are our only powerful and undiscussable tool for a real sustainable socioeconomic development of Africa by Africans for Africans.
“The international collaboration and partnership, which is necessary and mandatory in the space area, should be built on our strengths. And our only strengths are our human capital.
“I am filled with optimism as we embark on this journey together. Let us harness the power of knowledge, collaboration, and stakeholder engagement to shape a better future for the Africa and specifically the Western African region. Together, we can overcome challenges, protect our invaluable resources, and create a prosperous and sustainable Africa for generations to come.”
Speaking at the sideline, the NSRDA boss acknowledges that the conference is bringing West Africa to Nigeria so that scientists know the gaps and the interest of the various countries and proffer solutions to the gaps.
On impact at the end of the day, he added: “It will have so much impart because we are doing NEEDS assessment, we are looking areas where there are gaps so that we fill them.
“We are also looking at the resources within West Africa and we also want to know what is the human capital that is needed and why we need to build human capital.
“Until you are able to do this, Africa will not feel the impact of the Earth Observation it is doing within the African continent.”
He explained that GMES and Africa is global monitory of environmental including its security landscape, adding: If you look at most African and West African countries they are confronted by banditry and security challenges.
“Right now, Earth O (EO) is doing so much in the area of security but because it is not made known to the public people are not aware and it is only with earths observation that you share data on what is happening and how it is spreading.
“You can also monitor pattern so that you identify the best method to know what is happening and so this meeting will look into the area of security that is earth observational security.” The DG, added.
While validating agency’s efforts in Nigeria’s landscape, he added that they were able to produce maps of areas that were flooded which was passed and made available to agency that are in charge of flood.
He said: “You will remember that sometimes back we were trying to set up seismic stations with the Chinese, the idea was to identify areas where earthquakes are likely going to happen and then people cannot even link earthquake with flood but when you have these issues you have new drainages that are created which are also threat to flooding and so we have been in these areas and Nigeria has done so much in the area of flooding.
“What we are trying to do now is to bring other African countries to speed because they may not have the capacity and they don’t also have the facilities to deal with this.
“Nigeria has for over 15 years being serving as the regional support office for UN spider and UN spider is the activating charter anytime there is flood and I think that we have been doing so much. Only what we need to do is to engage and do advocacy with the actors that are managing these disasters so that they can.”
While also addressing the media along the sideline, Prof. Mbow, said: “The target of this workshop stemmed from AUC’s pillars for regional African communities and ECOWAS and CSE Dakar and the University of Ghana are playing leading role.
On what we are bringing onboard, he said: “There will be the positive possibility to join the ‘dots’ between two different countries and when you talked about flooding in Abuja, flooding in Abidjan or Kumasi Ghana it is the same rationale behind these floodings, the way we occupy and organize and manage our cities is almost the same and that doesn’t make a lot of sense for each country to be standing alone and trying to resolve a problem which is protracted to different other countries.
“The second reason why we are trying to build a consensus is the fact that the brain power is distributed differently in different countries.
According to the Senegalese, the capacity that you have in Nigeria can be connect to that of Senegal and Ghana and this will give us powerful stamina to derive the type of policy and planning that can go into policy decision.
Mbow, acknowledged the overarching imperative is not about alone science but connecting the issues to address issues such as flooding natural resources management as a whole.