Africa News
An international initiative launched at the end of 2017 by France on the eve of the ” One Planet Summit “, the SCO brings together space agencies from Europe, China, India, Israel, Russia, Mexico, Morocco and the United Arab Emirates, as well as the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA).
The Objective is to converge satellite data, field data and scientific work to model and monitor climate change and its impacts , from global to local scale.
“The SCO’s ambition is to become a world heritage. Its ultimate goal is to help countries prepare for climate change, to help them build realistic scenarios, and to monitor the already visible and future impacts across the territory.” –
The Observatory was launched in June 2018 to measure the impact of climate change and develop apps for water management, forest and crop monitoring, health services as well as connectivity. It is located in the French National Centre for Space Studies and houses 25 global space agencies.
SCO demonstrator partners as at June 2018 include: National Center for Space Studies (France), China National Space Administration (China), Royal Center for Remote Sensing Space (Morocco), National Center for Scientific Research (France), Research Institute for Development (France) and Weather-France.
The African Union (AU) has recently agreed to sign a joint declaration on the Observatory on the sidelines of the G7 meeting to be held in France on 25 and 26 August 2019, and this will allow African institutions access to relevant data. Framework agreements have also been signed between France, Ethiopia and Kenya governing access to the Observatory. These agreements will enable the two African countries to apply space technology to boost competencies in telecommunications, meteorology, cartography, climate change, agriculture and defense.
