اللغة الإنجليزية 
البرتغالية 
الفرنسية 
العربية 
Across Africa, farmers make daily decisions that depend on timing: When should we plant? When is the best time to apply fertiliser? Is the crop progressing well? Did the last rains make a difference? Traditionally, these answers rely on experience and observation. But in a changing climate, where rainfall can shift and pests strike silently, farmers need faster, clearer signals, ideally before stress becomes visible on the ground.
Digital Earth Africa (DE Africa) is working with agricultural partners to make that possible.
In Nakuru County, Kenya, a collaboration involving the African Plant Nutrition Institute, Image Tech International OCP Africa, and the Rift Valley Institute of Technology (RVIST) Farm has explored how satellite imagery can support crop monitoring across key growing seasons. Using both Sentinel-2 (10m resolution) and PlanetScope (3m resolution) datasets, the initiative focused on tracking the seasonal development of maize and wheat fields through spectral signatures, the unique “light response” plants emit as they grow.
DE Africa’s open platform enables stakeholders to access decision-ready satellite data such as surface reflectance imagery, Normalised Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), and fractional cover, all without needing to download or process raw files. Instead of complex modelling pipelines, users can interact with map-based tools that provide a simple view of crop greenness, vegetative persistence, or ground exposure over time.
By combining field knowledge from RVIST staff with spectral image sequences prepared by Image Tech International, the collaboration shows how ground observations and satellite insights can be combined to provide better understanding of crops development. While the field data remains confidential and continues to be assessed by the participating organisations, the process itself highlights an important shift: Earth observation is no longer reserved for national agencies and research labs. It is becoming a tool that farmers, agronomists, and training institutions can engage with directly.
As this work progresses, DE Africa will continue supporting African organisations to understand what different spectral patterns mean in real farming contexts, helping transform raw pixels into practical insights. Whether it’s identifying the optimal window for planting, comparing crop progression across fields, or understanding how weather shapes development, satellite-based monitoring is opening a new frontier for African agriculture.
The future of farming is not just in the soil; it’s also in the sky. And with the right partnerships, Africa is positioning itself to read both.