Remote Sensing Products and Services in Support of Agricultural Public Policies in Africa: Overview and Challenges

作者：Agnès Bégué, Louise Leroux, Mamy Soumaré, Jean-François Faure, Abdoul Aziz Diouf, Xavier Augusseau, Labaly Touré, Jean-Philippe Tonneau · 发表于：Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems · 年份：2020 · DOI：10.3389/fsufs.2020.00058 · 被引用次数：38 · 研究领域：Agricultural Innovations and Practices、Rangeland Management and Livestock Ecology、Seed and Plant Biochemistry

In the last decade, governments, international institutions, donors, the private sector, etc. have shown a renewed interest in agricultural issues in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). This interest came with a strong need for information in countries where the lack of reliable and timely basic information can be a problem. Thanks to its capacity to observe the Earth at local, regional and global scales and from various vantage points, satellite remote sensing is a powerful tool to streamline the monitoring and improvement of the existing systems, and thus to support decision-making. However, the path from satellite images to public policy decisions is not straightforward, and today, only few operational information services are available in SSA countries (e.g., early warning systems for food security and desert locust plagues prevention, rangeland production forecasting). This paper aims to analyze the gap between the technical aspects of the remote sensing sciences and the pragmatic need for relevant data to address agricultural policies in Africa and produce operational recommendations. To achieve this goal, the authors (1) determine the information, and in particular the geoinformation, needed to develop, implement and evaluate agricultural public policies, (2) illustrate the role of remote sensing as a public policy tool in SSA through an overview of the current off-the-shelf products and services derived from Earth Observation systems, and (3) propose an analysis of the existing...