We recently caught up with Amos T. Kabo-bah, Associate Professor and Dean for International Relations Office for the University of Energy and Natural Resources (UENR) in Ghana. Excitingly, UENR has just undertaken a formal partnership with Digital Earth Africa for innovative scientific and geospatial collaboration.
Amos is a widely published academic who is actively involved in driving uptake and awareness around the capabilities and power that earth observation data brings to decision-making to improve the lives and livelihoods of communities across Africa. We posed some questions about his own background in this space, and what Amos imagines the future to be.
Digital Earth Africa (DEA): Hi Amos, please give us an overview of your field and responsibilities.
Amos T. Kabo-bah (Amos): I am Associate Professor of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and currently Dean for the International Relations Office. Broadly, I currently teach urban drainage, hydraulics, climate change, Remote Sensing and GIS at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels. Under the UENR. I have been the Focal Person for the establishment of the Digital Belt and Road Initiative International Centre of Excellence for Big Data for Sustainable Development Goals in Ghana.
I have a Doctoral Degree in Hydrology and Water Resources from Hohai University in Nanjing, China, and my Masters Degree in Environmental Hydrology from Faculty of Geoinformation and Earth Observation (ITC) of the University of Twente in the Netherlands. My bachelor education was in Civil Engineering at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Ghana.
Local sustainable impacts through Earth Observation is my major concern and research interest, and I am strongly committed to seeing how co-creation, and the co-generation of knowledge and ideas with other experts can make this a reality in Ghana and Africa.
DEA: What is your experience in Sustainable Development and Climate Change?
Amos: I am supporting projects such as LEVELUP (bioelectric project) and SPIRIT (Climate change versus Electricity Production). I was the founding head for the establishment of the Earth Observation Research and Innovation Centre. I also led the establishment of key ultra-modern infrastructure for the University such as Constellation Observing System for Meteorology, Ionosphere, and the Climate (COSMIC-2) Ground station, the web-portal for Advanced Fire Information System (AFIS) for West Africa; and the Ghana Flux Tower at Bia-Tano Forest Reserve (a collaborative project with the Global Change Research Institute of Czechia).
I have served on a number of strategic committees for the University, notable among them is hosting and chairing the United Nations/Ghana/PSIPW - 5th International Conference on the use of space technology for water resources management (10-13 May 2022) and the AfriGEO Symposium from June 13-15 in Accra.
I co-chaired the hosting of the GEO Week 2022 held in Accra from the 31st to 4th November 2022. I was the head of Department for Civil and Environmental Engineering, and Energy and Environmental Engineering. Across Africa, I have been a Visiting Lecturer to the Pan African University Institute for Life Sciences in Nigeria and the WASCAL (West African Science Service Centre on Climate Change and Adapted Land Use) centers in Lome-Togo and Niamey-Niger.
DEA: You are a change-maker driving awareness and uptake of earth observation as a powerful tool for data-based decision making. Please tell us a little about your involvements in driving awareness around this key goal.
Amos: As a Programme Board Member of the Group on Earth Observation (GEO) I seek to advocate for open access and use of Earth observations for the benefit of society especially for deprived nations. Under GEO, I have served under several capacities including the GEO AquaWatch Initiative as a Steering Committee Member and Co-Chair for GEO Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN) Flagship and got elected as Co-Chair of the Programme Board for GEO in 2023. I was part of the Programme Committee Member for the Ocean Observations 2019 held in Hawaii, USA and the recent UN World Data Forum held in Hangzhou in 2023. At Global Climate Observing System (GCOS) of the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO), I serve as a Steering Committee Member.
DEA: How and when were you first introduced to Digital Earth Africa?
Amos: The idea of the DE Africa was originally conceived during the AfriGEO Symposium which I hosted in Sunyani under the Earth Observation Research and Innovation Centre at the University of Energy and Natural Resources in 2017. This was under the African Regional Data Cube Programme which was sponsored by the Global Partnerships for SDGs. Since then I have been active in the activities of DEA, and was part of the review team within GEO, to push it to become a GEO initiative.
DEA: How did (and do) you think the Digital Earth Africa platform and services can benefit Africans?
Amos: I am strongly aware of the opportunities the DE Africa platform briefs to various society benefit areas from water, energy and food security in Africa, and hence my strong advocate in promotion of DE Africa in every curriculum and teaching that I conduct, or I am engaged in.
DEA: How have you used the Digital Earth Africa Platform yourself, or with your students?
Amos: I have been using DE Africa since its launch in teaching undergraduate and postgraduate courses in Ghana, Nigeria and Algeria with students spanning from across different countries in Africa. The topics typically span all the different topical areas of DE Africa, and currently through the GEO Land Degradation Neutrality postgraduate programme at UENR, DE Africa is considered as core tools to be used by the postgraduate students.
If you consider a typical class of BSc Environmental Engineering, and Civil Engineering totally 100+, you can imagine the impact of DE Africa across these channels. I have also in recent past, encouraged all students in UENR to take the DE Africa online certificate courses as part of their assessment.
DEA: What is your opinion of the propensity of Africans to use EO data to drive evidence-base decision making? For example, are we incorporating this into environmental management and decision making enough?
Amos: Great! However, our renewed MoU with DEA with UENR would further strengthen and further solidify our efforts to integrate the DE Africa elements into various existing curriculum including considering DE Africa as an elective course across all programmes. I am anticipating to further promote this among sister research and academic institutions in Ghana and Africa.
DEA: What do you hope the partnership with DE Africa and UENR can bring about?
I see the partnership as a strong model, to scale up DEA activities in West Africa and North Africa within the next 5 years.
DEA: Thank you for your time and insights, Dr Kabo-bah