Call for Research Proposals 2025-2027

The main focus of this call is to leverage Earth observation to tackle present and future challenges in water and food security for Africa.

Themes

• Water and food are the main themes of the EO AFRICA R&D Facility’s Research Calls.

Topics

• EO contributions, using various techniques such as e.g. optical and hyperspectral remote sensing, Polarimetric and SAR to study and monitor:
  • Marine and coastal resources
  • Regional evapotranspiration and hydrological stresses
  • Hydrological extremes and induced hazards such as droughts and floods
• Crop development, yield forecast, precision farming and irrigation demand
• Lakes and rivers dynamics
• Water and air quality
• Forest and rangeland processes

Benefits

• Free access to cloud-based Virtual Research Environments (VREs) through the Innovation Lab of the Facility, an interactive geospatial computing platform with ready-to-use EO software, and facilitated access to EO data (e.g., Sentinel and other ESA missions) through the host DIAS infrastructure.
• Dedicated user and technical support for using VREs and developing geospatial computing workflows.
• Scientific support and advice and advice by senior researchers and experts of the EO AFRICA R&D Facility consortium.
• Access to the EO AFRICA Space Academy and its Digital Campus for capacity and knowledge development activities, such as online courses, webinars, and face-to-face training events on topics related to EO, cloud computing, food security, and water scarcity.
• Integration into the EO AFRICA Community for international scientific networking, collaboration, and visibility.

Funding Information

• A budget of up to 30,000 EUR to cover research activities during the project period (max. 15 months), such as personnel costs, fieldwork, data collection, bilateral visits, scientific meetings, training activities, etc.

Eligibility Criteria

• The project must be proposed by two scientists representing a collaborative partnership of one African and one European research entity (e.g., institute, laboratory, university) from a country which is an ESA Member state or cooperating state.
• The co-principal investigators should possess a PhD degree relevant to the topics of the call or be in the process of obtaining it as a PhD candidate.
• Project teams may include more researchers.
• Projects should be completed within 15 months.
• Project proposals should focus on one or more of the research topics of the call.
• Each proposal is expected to contain a research plan for the scientific cooperation of the African and European partners to develop an innovative and open-source EO algorithm/ workflow (e.g., as set of Jupyter Notebooks hosted on a public git-enabled platform, for example here).
• The proposal should explain how the work will be shared among the partners, including the roles of project team members and their expected contributions.
• The proposed research can be linked to the partners’ ongoing (collaborative) project. In that case, the proposal should clearly delineate the proposed activities from those of the ongoing research project.
• Research plan should be accompanied by a detailed budget, including anticipated cost items related to the research project, and its distribution between the African and European partner organizations.
• The proposed budget cannot include ICT resources for computing purposes (e.g., servers, HPC budgets), as such resources will be provided by the Network of Resources of the ESA separately
• Budget should be reserved to participate in the following 2 events:
  • At least one person from the African partner in the research projects should join the Face-2-Face course on Cloud Computing and Algorithms for EO Analyses planned in Tunis 17-21 November 2025 (date and place to be confirmed)
  • In addition, they request at least 2 persons (one from the African and one from the European side) to participate in an EO AFRICA RDF event planned to take place in April 2026 in Dar es Salaam (tbc)
• Both partners have equal rights on the budget, so its allocation must be decided in a full agreement. Nevertheless, due to the governing regulations, the European partner is responsible for administering the entire project budget. This includes invoicing EO AFRICA R&D Facility on behalf of the research tandem and consequently takes care of handling costs and payments to the African partner.
• The Innovation Lab of the EO AFRICA R&D Facility should be used for the development and execution of the algorithm/workflow and auxiliary project activities. Commercial use of the resources or executing activities not related to the project are not allowed.
• The developed algorithm/workflow should utilise EO data from ESA missions, such as Sentinel. Third-party data can also be utilised. The use of analysis-ready data and EO data services is encouraged.
• In case one of the outputs of the project is a dataset, it must follow the attached guidelines on publishing cloud-native datasets.
• The developed algorithm/workflow and its application in the thematic context of the call shall be published at least in one international conference proceeding or in an open-access peer-reviewed journal. Open-access publications are supported by the Facility from an additional fund. Thus open-access publication costs should not be included in the budget.

For more information, visit EO AFRICA.