Most agricultural statistics in Africa are gathered the slow way: surveyors on foot, notebooks in hand, travelling kilometre by kilometre across vast landscapes. It works. But it takes time, and time costs accuracy.

A new partnership between Digital Earth Africa and Senegal’s Agence Nationale de la Statistique et de la Démographie (ANSD) is changing that equation. Signed in February 2026, the five-year framework agreement brings satellite data into the heart of Senegal’s agricultural statistics system, giving planners, researchers, and policymakers a faster, sharper view of what is growing where.

^{_{From the Ground to the Satellite}}

The agreement connects two sources of knowledge that have long operated separately. ANSD holds decades of agricultural survey data including crop types, yields and farmer behaviour. DE Africa holds a continuously updated, satellite-derived view of land across the entire African continent.

Together, they will develop new methodologies to calculate agricultural indicators. Areas under cultivation, crop types and seasonal yields using Earth observation data combined with traditional survey sources. The goal is not to replace field surveys, but to make them more powerful.

The partnership will also tackle SDG monitoring. Senegal has specific targets linked to agriculture and food security. By integrating satellite data with survey results, ANSD and DE Africa will build tools to track those indicators more reliably and more regularly.

^{_{Practical Answers to Practical Questions}}

For Senegal, this is about getting better answers to practical questions. How much land is under rice cultivation this season? Are groundnut yields tracking ahead of or behind projections? Where are the gaps between what surveys report and what satellites observe?

DE Africa will provide ANSD with open access to its satellite data and analytical tools, technical support for crop mapping with a focus on Senegal’s priority crops including rice, groundnut, millet, and maize, and assistance integrating Earth observation data into national statistical systems.

_{^{Africa’s Data Future}}

Senegal is one of 54 countries across Africa that DE Africa serves. The ANSD partnership is part of a growing movement to embed satellite-derived data into the official statistical systems of African governments, not as a technical experiment, but as a practical tool that serves decision-makers at every level.

The data is already there. The work now is making it useful.