The primary objective of the Working Group (WG) Africa is to settle a meaningful, concerted and scalable effort to build Copernicus related capacities among African Copernicus expert communities and actor networks to enable knowledge growth. The purpose here is to train African trainers in three languages (English, Portuguese and French), and to develop training adapted to local needs and context in a co-design and sustainable/perennial approach with African trainers. The content of the training will be oriented towards the development of Copernicus based applications and services aiming at responding to Africa-specific regional and local problematics and challenges to ensure that Earth Observation uptake is contextually relevant for the trainers and trainees.

The WG Africa project is a joint effort of 12 national institutions of 8 European countries in the framework of the FPCUP programme. This effort comes as a complement of those carried by European and African institutions (European Commission, African Union Commissions, ESA, and Eumetsat) to enhance capacities in Africa in the sector of Earth Observation from space, in particular in the context of GMES & Africa.

The action plan is guided by the following logic:

• Raise awareness of these local entities to Copernicus data application and service potential. This is done individually by each project partner with their African counterparts. A series of Webinars is also foreseen at the scale of the whole project to raise awareness of the onset of this programme among large African communities interested by the services offered by Earth observation.
• Elaborate with local entities willing to join the programme a project of co-developing series of training sessions based on local needs and prioritization to be held locally in 2024 and ideally, beyond.
• Constitute and train in 2023 in three languages (Portuguese, French and English) a group of future Copernicus African trainers assigned by local entities.
• Support the African Trainers in the implementation of the local training sessions with the objective to train altogether around 400 people in 2024.

Outputs and Results:

• A minimum of 10-12 African countries targeted
• At least 300 African trainees will be trained
• A substantial number (~ 20) of African trainers will be empowered to develop applications using Copernicus data and to teach this know-how to their communities
• Continue interactions between the WG partners and the African trainers beyond this action