The first African initiative to collect environmental data is bearing fruit

Opinion piece by Abebe Haile-Gabriel, Assistant Director General and Regional Representative for Africa of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

With Moctar Sacande, Coordinator of the Action Against Desertification program in support of the Great Green Wall of Africa program at the FAO Forestry Division, and Danilo Mollicone, Technical Officer at the FAO Climate Change, Biodiversity and Environment Office.

In the midst of a very busy news cycle, a quiet revolution is taking place in Africa.

Data analysts across the continent have been collecting data on agriculture, land, and the environment and, for the first time, we can get a complete picture of land use in Africa. The data revealed more forests and arable land than previously detected and revealed for the first time the existence of 7 billion trees outside the forest. We can see the forests and the trees.

The analysis also shows that 350 million hectares of arable land are cultivated in Africa, more than double the size of the European Union. These results confirm that Africa has enormous potential to become a productive power, to produce enough food to feed its population and to earn income from exports, as do other regions with comparable land resources.

Thanks to this initiative, Africa is the first continent to have completed the collection of accurate, comprehensive, and harmonized numerical data on land use and land-use change. The publication of these results during the African Climate Week (26-29 September 2021), is particularly relevant, as African countries and their partners are meeting to discuss actions against climate change in Africa.

The analysis revealed that the area covered by the Great Green Wall in Africa initiative — which aims to restore arid and semi-arid lands — has 393 million hectares of land that can be restored. This area is equivalent to the size of India and represents a great opportunity for the large-scale restoration model led by FAO in support of the Great Green Wall.

The list of good results is long. It is noted, among other things, that 17 million hectares of land have been transformed into cultivated land since 2000, an increase of 5 percent over the period under review. The Democratic Republic of Congo has the largest forest area (155 million hectares), followed by Angola (66 million hectares). Nigeria has the largest area of cultivated land (50 million hectares), followed by Ethiopia (29 million hectares). Only 10 percent of cultivated land on the continent is irrigated.

Innovation for the future of Africa

The Africa Open DEAL initiative (DEAL being an acronym for “Data for Environment, Agriculture and Land”), was led by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the African Union Commission (AUC), and funded by the European Union Commission (AUC), and funded by the European Union, Agriculture and Land, and the African Union Commission (AUC), and funded by the European Union, Germany, and Land. The huge data collection operation was carried out between 2018 and 2020 with the support of the Pan-African Great Green Wall Agency, the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and 30 African countries.

Analysts used Collect Earth, a free, open-source tool developed by FAO with support from Google. It allowed operators to enlarge sample points of around 0.5 hectares using very high-resolution images, allowing them for the first time to count individual trees and see agricultural land, forest fires, infrastructure, and other land uses. It is important to note that hard-to-reach places in the field were analyzed, which allowed the team to discover the 7 billion trees that were not previously recorded.

The results are now available free of charge to all researchers: they are integrated into the FAO Hand in Hand Initiative geospatial platform and are available to everyone via EarthMap.org. This means users can detect where deforestation is ongoing, where homes encroach on cropland or grassland, and where wetlands are disappearing. Countries can monitor and report on climate change instruments and agreements, including Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and Sustainable Development Goals indicators.

FAO supports the transformation to MORE efficient, inclusive, resilient and sustainable agri-food systems for better production, better nutrition, better environment and better lives, without leaving anyone behind. We believe that science and innovation can provide real solutions to many of the problems the world is facing, and this initiative is helping to inform the way forward.