The Role of Open Science and Geoinformatics in Advancing Sustainable Development Goals in Africa: A Strategic Framework and an Action Plan

– Designating the main ministry, division, or organization in charge of managing the UNESCO OS principles’ implementation.

– Identify the person who will be the official point of contact and responsible for leading the implementation of the Charter.

– Assemble teamwork in charge of the delivery of the initial stages of implementing the Charter

– Secure the necessary support for the required financials and resources for the initiative

– Deciding the delivery plan that directs the execution of the charter principles.

– Identifying initial activities and defining specific deadlines.

– Deciding how a government will monitor its progress in implementing the Charter.

– Release the first open datasets and create an enabling environment.

– Engage with external stakeholders to identify the most beneficial datasets to share first.

– Engage with the institutional leaders who will be crucial to early progress.

– Engage with external organizations that may offer support.

– Establish regular communication with key stakeholders to follow progress, exchange knowledge and accept feedback.

– Encourage openness culture by collaborating with external stakeholders by publishing data in a way that’s beneficial to them.

– Use Lessons learnt to strengthen the engagement with both new and existing stakeholders.

– Understand the key priorities that need additional funding, support and development by determining the requirements for new technology, skills and leadership.

– Expand the use of open data practice and make efforts to integrate the “open by default” philosophy as a core element of its culture.

– Identifying persons who have been slower to adopt open approaches.

– Publish open data and enable assessment using tools and benchmarks.

– Define an open data policy/identify the license under which data will be shared.

– Data audit to find out what data the government already produced, and how it is shared.

– Make a registry of important data assets based on the results of a data audit, and use it to keep track of decisions about which datasets can be shared etc.

– Define guidelines that describe how users can credit the usage of data.

– Develop agile frameworks to facilitate interoperability and avoid project silos.

– Deploy an open collaborative geoportal with Cyberinfrastructure to Support Science and publish data.

– Allow citizens to participate in the process.

– Develop open impact measurements and a range of metrics over time.

– Standards adoption to ensure data is released in welldefined, open formats.

– Establish data governance and manage data privacy.

– Communication and regular consultation with potential data users to understand their needs and priorities

– Set up online communities and forums to share knowledge within a certain arena.

– Get involved in egovernment and data management initiatives.

– Creating good open data documentation.

– Promoting the acceptance of community norms for open data.

– Ensure the availability of communication channels which early data users can access to obtain help and ask questions about data.

– Establish expressions of interest that allow new users to show interest in joining a particular working group.

– Open calls for OS projects among the community in response to regional needs.

– Provide training among stakeholders and partners.

– Care and adoption of startups who excel in open science.

– Support and encourage effective multistakeholder regional networks in response to emerging regional needs.

– Finding and developing open data expertise

– Provide training among stakeholders and partners.

– Provide open educational resources.

– Adopting open data projects for knowledge management to avoid silos.

– A public open data strategy which outlines the goals and objectives that will guide the process of releasing data

– A mapping of the data landscape.

– Development of dashboards for monitoring various activities.

– Leadership and accountability are necessary to monitor progress.

– An articulated vision for an “open by default” culture

– Behave ethically.

– Ensure sustainability.

– Mapping and predicting poverty globally.

– Utilizing open data for informed decision-making.

– Mapping and estimating/predicting crop yields.

– Mapping crop suitability based on geo-climatic data.

– Mapping and mitigating plant diseases to improve crop productivity.

– Forecasting farm production globally.

– Enabling smart agriculture for cost-effective farming.

– Utilizing open data to understand farm performance.

– Promoting collaboration for open data use in addressing global hunger issues.

– Mapping diseases (e.g., cholera outbreaks) to pinpoint sources.

– Forecasting farm production at all scales.

– Utilizing open data for informed decision-making by identifying gaps.

– Mapping schools considering students’ social and economic conditions.

– Identifying locations for new schools, hospitals, and roads.

– Identifying information gaps to support connectivity needs.

– Democratizing higher education through open access to learning materials.

– Increasing collaboration and global research engagement.

– Providing knowledge access to students and researchers.

– Improves fairness, and equity and increases openness for all.

– Sharing open data and having expertise in the management of data policies, training, and infrastructure can help shape innovation and policy, leading to improvements in the sustainability of the industry.

– Mapping and monitoring changes in water quality parameters in long-term cases.

– Monitoring climatic factors such as ocean conditions, wind, temperature, etc.

– Tracking plastic waste, measuring the temperature of the sea, and keeping an eye on the degree of coastal eutrophication.

– Estimating the groundwater change in response to climatic and anthropogenic forcing.

– Modeling river dynamics in response to demanding activities.

– Mapping environmental threats such as pollution, encroachment, and deforestation.

– Monitoring climatic factors such as temperature, soil moisture, or ocean conditions.

– Africa Climate Change Data Exchange (ACCDEX) is a platform for sharing climate change data in Africa. ACCDEX is supporting the implementation of Climate Action and Africa Agenda 2063.

– Monitoring social behaviour in response to environmental/political events.

– Utilizing open data for informed decision-making.

– Mapping modern slavery to enable prevention and eradication actions.

– Mapping and monitoring industries (e.g., mining, fishing).

– Utilizing cutting-edge technologies for smart city development.

– Utilizing open data for informed decision-making.

– AfriGeo initiative is working to promote the use of geospatial technology in Africa.

– Facilitate collaborative efforts and knowledge transfer to improve understanding of global issues.

– Promote active participation of citizens in scientific experiments and hands-on.

– Identify and target areas that need investment and support.

– Map and monitor the progress of SDG targets.

– Use of open data improves fairness, and equity and increases openness.

– Monitoring and conserving ecosystems, endangered species, and habitats.

– Mapping and tracking water quality changes.

– Mapping urban metrics.

– Updating transportation networks, buildings, impervious areas.

– Understanding surface urban heat islands.

– Utilizing open data for informed decision-making.

– Provide institutions with a basis to promote sustainability efforts.

– Mapping environmental threats such as deforestation, pollution, encroachment.

– Monitoring climatic factors like temperature, soil moisture, or ocean conditions.

– Making well-informed decisions by utilizing open data.

– Monitoring climatic factors like wind, temperature, etc.

– Measuring sea level rise.

– Monitoring the coastal eutrophication level, and tracking plastic waste.

– Understanding of Marine resources through the use of open data resulting in changes that increase the sector’s sustainability.

– Mapping land cover changes.

– Managing the effects of natural disasters, including floods, earthquakes, fires.

– Assess vulnerabilities to strengthen emergency response and resilience against crises and natural disasters.

– Making well-informed decisions by utilizing open data.

– Geospatial techniques are easily scalable to global, regional, national levels.

– Making well-informed decisions by utilizing open data.

– EO provide a platform for pursuing societal benefits towards more sustainable, safer future.

– Stakeholders should adopt collaborative measures for the management of natural resources and avert natural disasters.

– Strength knowledge transfer and collaborative efforts and for a better understanding of global challenges.

– Promote active participation of citizens in scientific experiments and hands-on.

– Active engagement of all relevant stakeholders enhances the potential impact of socially relevant programs.

– Lack of legal frameworks and policies promoting OS from governments, institutions and funders.

– Legal frameworks and policies can be institutionalized and customized to meet the specific needs of the region.

– Lack of funds.

– Multiple-source funding is needed.

– Lack of awareness.

– Incentives for OS practices.

– Lack of infrastructure, and availability of tools.

– Use of cyber platforms and the need for funding and sponsors.

– Low internet penetration in Africa.

– Use of cyber platforms.

– OS practitioners in Africa receive little motivation and recognition.

– Build capacity and expertise on OS.

– Lack of capacity building.

– High-tech virtual laboratories should be made available to African nations under an open license.

– Absence of alliances to advance OS and Geoinformatics in Africa

– limited continental research mobility and collaborations.

– Partnerships and alliances between several stakeholders are necessary, including the government, academics, funding agencies, libraries, publishers, etc.

– Dialogue with all stakeholders.

– Requires efforts to harmonize standards, policies, and practices across borders.

– African scientists have a higher desire to work in isolation.

– Traditional norms have placed a strong emphasis on secrecy and competition.

– Changing research cultures and practices.

– Provision of incentives for OS practices.

– Requires a shift towards collaboration, openness, and sharing.

– Lack of leadership and integrity

– Provision of training courses to enhance the skills and build human capacity.

– Inadequate involvement between the academic community and policymakers.

– Institutional support and incentives are required at all levels.

– The cost of open-access publication is very expensive for African scientists as the value of the dollar is higher than all African currencies.

– New business models, and institutional policies, are required.

– Researchers are unfamiliar with OS principles and how to implement them at different stages of a project’s life cycle.

– Build national human capacities and partnerships of OS and geoinformatics in Africa.

– Researchers may worry that making their study ideas and results available to the public could be misused or misinterpreted by third parties.

– Foster incentives, rewards and credits for sharing data.

– Language barriers especially for non-native English speakers.

– AI-powered translation tools can assist in reducing language barriers.

– Lack of research ethics modules.

– The research ethics modules should be co-designed between the institutions and the vendor.

– Low quality of citizen science data.

– Develop new procedures focus on enhancing the reliability of citizen science data, by

– developing these data more interoperable with existing EO data,

– provision of standard metadata and

– assuring the data are geolocated to easily be used in decision-making tools.

– No guidelines on which code repositories are better for sharing software and code.

– Official repositories are needed.

– There is a risk that newly developed infrastructure solutions do not satisfy the needs of the scientific community or won’t be adopted enough to justify the cost of implementation.

– Software should be co-designed with the stakeholders and according to its user needs.

– Cloud-based collaborative infrastructures require advances in data stewardship practices.

– Data governance and management plans are needed.

– Protecting intellectual property and privacy.

– OS must coexist with the defense of private property rights and intellectual property rights.

– Measuring and evaluating impact.

– Requires a multifaceted approach.

– Fostering international collaboration.

– Requires efforts to harmonize standards, policies, and practices across borders.