As a continuation to the GIS Africa project objectives, SEAMIC in collaboration with African-European Union (EU) institutions and EU financing is now involved in executing the African European Georesources Observation System (AEGOS) Project that was launched in Cape Town, South Africa on February 9, 2009.
The project was founded on networking of African and European research institutes and organizations that are involved in solid earth data collection, conservation, processing and dissemination; and who jointly hold an archive of Africa-related geological and georesources observation data. The proposed African-EU partnership has the objective of ensuring the effective use of these existing georesources data and would envision joint implementation of research efforts through the creation of a framework for standardized georesources information that would easily be accessible for use by the intended end-user.
The research institutes and organizations in Africa and Europe believe in the necessity for integration of geodata and information in a global system and work actively on its standardization and interoperability. Building an observation system to host and give access to data on Africa’s georesources will require common operational and data management procedures.
All the partners will have to share a common goal to build a sustainable platform for exchanging data and developing new user-oriented products and services to assist economic development in Africa. While 8 countries and two regional African institutions UEMOA and SEAMIC are the only partners at this preparatory stage of AEGOS, more countries from Africa will be included in the implementation Phase II to benefit from the technical assistance.
To implement AEGOS successfully; it is therefore felt that the status of all existing georesources data on Africa and the human resources capacity is well established at this initial preparatory phase of AEGOS that would last 30 months beginning from December, 2008. The implementation which is based on the needs assessment at Phase I is started during phase II of AEGOS for the provision of technical assistance in the areas of human resources, hardware, software …etc to assist African future development plans to be supported from georesources data.
SEAMIC is participating in the consortium to facilitate in benefiting African countries from such technical assistance initiatives by associating with the highly experienced and developed European institutions. SEAMIC’s participation was mainly in the Work package (WP6) dealing with the development of capacity building and training.
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