After two and half years of successful operation, the Africa Regional Data Cube (ARDC) will be decommissioned as we transition to Digital Earth Africa (DE Africa) - a major step forward for providing open access to Earth observations for the entire continent.
Launched in Kenya in 2018, the ARDC was led by the Committee for Earth Observation Satellites (CEOS) and the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data (GPSDD) with the support of Amazon Web Services (AWS), the Group of Earth Observation (GEO) and the Strathmore University. The ARDC harnessed the latest Earth observation data and satellite technology to help Ghana, Kenya, Sierra Leone, Senegal, and Tanzania address various issues relating to agriculture, food security, deforestation, urbanization, water access, and more.
The ARDC was based on Open Data Cube technology and responsive to the needs of partner countries, demonstrating the strong demand for such tools and access to data. In parallel, the ARDC team addressed capacity-building needs to build capability across users and develop new use cases.
DE Africa now offers advanced services expanding datasets and products to the continental scale, thus giving users access to data for all countries in Africa. The ARDC users have now transitioned to the DE Africa platform after following a self-paced six-week training program. The program is now available online for anyone to access, opening the way for a larger scale, in-country capacity development program with DE Africa implementing partners in Africa.
We thank all the ARDC partners and users and look forward to the next generation of users on DE Africa as we collectively work to deliver impact on environmental, social and economic issues across Africa.