The project started in July 1996 and was concluded in July 2000. Thirteen memberstates of SEAMIC and SADC namely Angola, Botswana, Comoros, Ethiopia, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe — participated fully in the project. The Geodesa project consultants were two institutions from the Netherlands, The Netherlands Institute of Applied Geosciences - National Geological Survey (NITG-TNO) and the International Institute for Geo-information Science and Earth Observation (ITC).

The official title of the project was: "Technical Assistance to support geophysical, geochemical and mineral occurrence data collection and analysis in the SADC and Eastern African states, in particular at the SEAMIC and mineral occurrences data at Southern African Development Community Mining Co-ordinating Unit (SADC-MCU), Lusaka". For the sake of convenience the project was renamed to "GEOscience Data compilation in Eastern and Southern Africa" (GEODESA).

Objectives

The project's overall objective can be summarised as
"Making southern and eastern Africa's geoscience and exploration information more easily accessible".

Increased data accessibility is expected to contribute to creating an enabling environment with optimal investment conditions for the private sector. Furthermore, the strengthened Geological Survey institutions could be better equipped to execute their own tasks in a better and more efficient manner, and both regional institutions could start acting as "one-stop-shop" for services and information related to geoscience information.

The technical assistance to the 13 Geological Surveys involved, was focusing on managing and upgrading their existing geoscientific data. The assistance to SEAMIC in Dar es Salaam also involved establishing a new Geo-Information department which comprises a Regional Exploration Data unit catering for both the public and the private sector.

Implementation

The implementation strategy of the project had been to:
first build capacity and strengthen the institutions by:

• Providing comprehensive computer hard-and software to each member State (based on PC systems) for digitising, processing and interpreting geoscience data using state-of-the-art methods and standards; and

• Providing long-term training and expert assistance to geoscientists in each member State to ensure a sound basis of expertise for sustainable development in the field of resource exploration.

and then assist the member States in:

• Cataloguing, standardising, reprocessing and effective application of their existing geoscience data.

• Production of regional, national thematic maps and support to cross-border studies; and

• implementation of follow-up programmes.

while simultaneously providing a forum for scientific interaction between scientists from member states and regional organisations.
Associated important aims of the project were:

• Guaranteeing a long-term role for SEAMIC as both a regional service centre and a Science and Technology Centre; and

• Strengthening contacts between geoscientists from the region, with a view to developing synergy in, for example, joint research projects.

Acheivements

Some of the main achievements of the project were that it:

• Equipped both regional centres (SEAMIC and MCU) and the 13 participating national Geological Surveys with state-of-the-art PC-based hard-and software for digitisation and standardisation of geo-information.

• Provided five (eight-week) training courses on modern management, processing, integration and presentation of mineral exploration data; classes comprised one geoscientist from each participating institution.

• Organised four workshops on several different geo-science topics, which provided a good opportunity for scientific interaction among the geo-scientific community in the region, from industry, universities as well as the member States' Geological Surveys.

• Developed and launched a GIS based meta-database of regional geophysical and geochemical surveys carried out in Eastern and Southern Africa including an index of available geological maps. The meta-database is available online.

• Launched two cross-border geological study projects.