The EO AFRICA R&D Facility will include two calls for research studies that will address African research challenges as identified during consultations with the stakeholders. The research projects are intended mainly to facilitate an African-European scientific cooperation and ideally should build on on-going research activities.
The research topics will target a digital approach to tackle food security and water scarcity problems in Africa, making full use of the unprecedented observation capabilities of the Copernicus and Earth Explorer programs, and will be conducted in partnership between African and European scientists.
Research projects are expected to develop a common research plan for their scientific cooperation with the goal of developing innovative algorithms or workflows to be delivered as open source tools in e.g. Jupyter Notebooks.
Each research project will have tailor-made Virtual Research Environment (VRE) based on its scientific needs and will receive dedicated technical and scientific support (Innovation Lab).
In summary, there will be:
- Phase 1 (2021-2024): 2 consecutive calls for 30 collaborative projects (12 months duration), for African & European research tandems. Research budget: EUR 25.000/per project, (EUR 750.000 in total) plus ICT infrastructure & technical/scientific support.
- Phase 2 (2024-2027): 2 consecutive calls for 20 collaborative projects (15 months duration), for African & European research tandems. Research budget: EUR 30.000/per project, (EUR 750.000 in total) plus ICT infrastructure & technical/scientific support.
The 13 proposal awarded during the first call can be consulted here.
The 17 proposal awarded during the second call can be consulted here.
The 10 proposal awarded during the third call can be consulted here.