Many of today’s challenges, including the fight against poverty require reliable, complete and up-to-date information to inform, plan, implement and adjust appropriate responses and policies. Geospatial data, whether acquired by space (satellites) or terrestrial technologies (drones or IoT data), represent an increasingly valuable source of information. Indeed, technological changes and the massive deployment of earth observation satellites generate a phenomenal amount of earth observation data. Ever more precise and less and less expensive (freely and openly accessible for data from the European Copernicus programme), geospatial data can be used in many sectors, namely maritime safety and security, agriculture and land use, urban planning, monitoring of vegetation and biodiversity, adaptation to change climate, geographic economy etc. Geospatial data represents a two-fold opportunity: Beyond enabling decision-makers to increase the effectiveness of their public policies, especially for marginalised territories and communities, data-based solutions may also be important levers to create value and advance socio-institutional development. 

The Multi-Donor Action “Data Governance in Africa” is part of the Team Europe Initiative (TEI) “Digital for Development (D4D)” and jointly co-financed by the European Union (EU), the Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) of Germany and the Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs (MEAE) of France. The Action aims to promote a “Development-oriented and human-centric data economy and society in Africa supported, in line with the AU Data Policy Framework”.

One of the specific objectives of the Action, Specific Objective 2, is to promote data use and cross-border data flows leveraged on to create value and inform regulations in selected sectors. In accordance with this specific objective, Expertise France (EF) will implement capacity-building activities aiming to increase the ability of regional and national institutions, CSOs and Private Sector entities to access, analyse, use and share data for value creation, by supporting access and use of geospatial data.

Today, the European Copernicus Programme offers a wide range of continuously updated Earth observation (EO) data from the Copernicus Sentinel missions. Despite the data being openly and freely accessible, few institutions, CSOs and private sector entities access, use and share this data for value creation. Barriers include lacking awareness within organisations, limited technical capacities, lacking infrastructure, and few experimentation opportunities with potential use cases. In order to contribute to overcome these barriers, improve access and develop use cases in two countries, Kenya and Senegal, EF will carry out the following activities:

•  Needs assessment workshops with national stakeholders to identify geospatial and space data access issues, actual use and potential scale up;
• Provision of specific technical platforms to facilitate the use of geospatial data by universities, NGOs and incubators/ accelerators and companies for prototyping space-based services, thereby consolidating access to open source geospatial data.

During a later project phase and according to needs expressed by its partners, EF will provide trainings and/or other capacity building activities aiming to:

•         Upskill business support structures for geospatial data-driven entrepreneurship with a focus on sustainable development use cases;
•          Facilitate uptake of geospatial data by local ecosystem building on existing national initiatives.

I.      Description of the assignment

1)      Planned activities

The service provider shall support EF and its key expert on space data in order to perform the following activities:

Assignment preparation (estimated workload: 1 day) 

• Examine relevant documents, etc.
• Participate in preparatory meeting

Phase I: Consultation and needs assessment (estimated workload: max. 12 days)

·     Consult partners and assess their existing capacities and needs

o   Remote meetings of Kenyan stakeholders

o   Remote meetings of Senegalese stakeholders

o   Field trips to Kenya and/or Senegal if necessary may be envisaged.

·         Benchmark national and regional data access infrastructures (e.g. DataCube) including potential synergies

·         Draft a brief report presenting the analysis of

o   partners’ expectations, generic and specific needs, complementary data needs (in addition to Sentinel data)

o   existing national and regional data access infrastructures

Phase II: Technical specifications of the data platforms (estimated workload: max. 6 days)

·         Propose, discuss and refine technical specifications of the data platforms, as follows:

  A generic part detailing:

-          Functionalities

-          Country data inclusion mechanisms

-          Open-source tools to be included

-          Performance requirements

-          Technical configurations

-          Maintenance and support

          Country-specific specifications including :

-          Country specific data to be included

-          Open-source tools and algorithms linked to partner organisations’ specific priority topics

 Phase III: Participation in the identification of a platform provider (estimated workload: max. 5 days)

·         Support EF with developing and publishing a competitive tender and a bid evaluation grid for the selection of a suitable data platform provider (criteria, scores, weights, etc.).

·         Organise and coordinate the evaluation process and the selection of the data platform provider (participation in evaluation, meetings with other evaluators, selection report)

Phase IV: Development of the data platforms (estimated workload: max. 15 days)

·         Monitor the development process of the data platforms

·         Support EF and partners with quality control

·         Field trips to Kenya and/or Senegal if necessary may be envisaged.

Post-assignment follow-up (estimated workload: max. 1 day)

·         Produce a final report compiling all previous documents produced, presenting the final results and providing strategic and operational recommendations for EF and partner organisations

2)      Anticipated deliverables

3)      Coordination 

The service provider shall designate a single contact person for project implementation purposes.

A kick-off meeting shall be held 5 days after the contract award has been notified.

Close collaboration must take place with EF personnel and EF’s key expert on space data, from assignment preparation right up to completion. Furthermore, regular exchanges must take place with the team on assignment progress and any difficulties that may be encountered.

II.      Place, duration and terms of performance

1)      Implementation period: 6 May 2024 -  6 April 2025 

2)      Start date: 6 May 2024

3)      End date: 6 April 2025

4)      Effective duration per assignment: 11 months

5)      Schedule/programme

The indicative programme for assignment implementation is as follows: