Human-Powered Earth Observations for African-Led Sustainability Transformation

ver the past three decades, one of the world’s largest environmental citizen science programs, GLOBE, has built a globally trusted foundation of open data, community partnerships, and educational tools. With contributions from 27 counties in Africa and over 125countries around the world, the NASA GLOBE program has enabled youth, educators, scientists, and communities to collaboratively monitor land cover, atmosphere, hydrosphere, and biodiversity. These collaborations have created a unique, open-access dataset with over 270 million observations that continue to shape environmental research and policy. GLOBE has been funded through the US Government which is at risk for continued funding. Although unfortunate, this provides us with a unique opportunity to significantly expand and refurbish global citizen science without strong political presence. A not-for-profit, Next Generation Global Collaboratory, Inc, was formed to leverage, support, and extend the GLOBE community while providing increased opportunities through rapidly developing technologies in sensors and AI. We are building a community of practice through our network of networks and focusing on pilot projects in Africa.  To support citizen science contributions for science research and policy, this panel brings together diverse academics, environmental practitioners, and local/traditional knowledge experts who are engaged with citizen science projects. From their perspectives they will discuss how African-led, community-engaged citizen science initiatives can support resilient, inclusive, and evidence-based decision-making across land, water, and urban systems. Panelists will discuss how integrating scientific rigor, technology, education, indigenous and community knowledge, and policy-enabling environments creates practical pathways for sustainability transformation. The session emphasizes co-production of knowledge, workforce development, and scalable collaborative models that support locally driven solutions.