It's always exciting when two human-centered programs come together to lay the groundwork for impactful action based on a shared vision.
The Sahel and West Africa Club (SWAC), part of the OECD, and Digital Earth Africa (DE Africa) share a common goal: to provide data-driven insights that inform high-level decision-making and ultimately drive positive change for African communities.
OECD/SWAC: Fostering Regional Cooperation and Development
OECD/SWAC fosters strategic dialogue among its members to anticipate regional transformations and their territorial impacts. By producing high-quality maps, data, and in-depth analyses, SWAC provides valuable insights that inform decision-making by taking both a retrospective and forward-looking approach to catalyse regional integration, sustainable development, and long-term stability. Bringing together key regional actors including UEMOA, CILSS, and ECOWAS—alongside development partners and governments, SWAC serves as a unique platform for collaboration and knowledge-sharing across West Africa.
A Meeting of Minds: Collaborating for Impact
A serendipitous meeting at a conference brought together Brilé Anderson, Lead for Climate, Urbanisation, and Environment at SWAC, and Mpho Sadiki, Earth Observation data scientist at DE Africa. During the event, Sadiki emphasised the importance of accessible, needs-based, analysis-ready data for empirical decision-making across Africa.
Sadiki’s message aligned closely with one of OECD/SWAC’s core thematic priorities—providing decision-makers with up-to-date data to support resilient and sustainable urbanisation. By 2050, Africa’s urban population is expected to grow by an additional 900 million people from 2015. As urban population’s grow, the demand for land intensifies, putting pressure on green spaces that offer crucial ecosystem services, such as cooling effects to cope with extreme heat.
To help address this challenge, OECD/SWAC developed ready-to-use indicators to calculate the availability of green spaces by combining urban boundaries (as defined by Africapolis) with the ESA World Cover database. Yet, one obstacle for OECD/SWAC was how to make the methodology widely available and build capacity with local actors, beyond in-person trainings.
Reducing Challenges and Building Opportunities
By collaborating with DE Africa, OECD/SWAC can make these codebooks available, enabling decisionmakers to track the evolution of green spaces in their own urban areas. DE Africa solves some of the significant challenges faced by African decision-makers, such as limited data and computational resources.
Exploring Green Spaces in Africa with DE Africa and OECD/SWAC
Digital Earth Africa (DE Africa) is more than just a geospatial data portal—it's an open-source platform and a freely accessible sandbox where users can run code on vast datasets. As part of an exciting collaboration, DE Africa and the OECD/SWAC have developed interactive notebooks that allow users to analyze green spaces in African urban areas, based on OECD/SWAC indicators. These notebooks not only replicate existing analyses but also empower users to run their own code and explore the data firsthand.
Together, DE Africa and OECD/SWAC have launched three new notebooks:
- Africapolis Green Space Indicators – A general dataset describing green spaces across urban areas.
- Green Space Availability Methodology – A step-by-step guide using the ESA World Cover database and Africapolis urban agglomerations.
- Urban Tree Cover Analysis with Sentinel-2 – A method to assess tree cover in cities, using Sentinel-2 data and Africapolis urban agglomerations or customizable boundaries.
DE Africa and OECD/SWAC Partnership
"This partnership has the potential to spark meaningful discussions and broaden our collective impact. Ultimately, we aim to provide key data—such as the number of extreme heat days across Africa—to support anticipatory decisions and risk mitigation strategies," Anderson adds.
Jorge Patiño, Geographer and Policy Analyst at OECD/SWAC, emphasizes that DE Africa adds substantial value to the green space data already available. "We can direct local governments and institutions to the DE Africa Sandbox environment, where they can tailor data for their specific needs. This localized approach is vital for effective urban planning."
Empowering Africa through Data-Driven Urban Planning
The collaboration between OECD/SWAC and DE Africa holds the potential to help African countries better understand urban hotspots, identify areas for green space development, and even pinpoint flood-prone areas in densely populated regions. These insights can inform better urban planning, helping governments pre-empt challenges such as overpopulation and unsuitable settlement areas.