meteoblue is pleased to announce its participation in the KijaniSpace project, a Horizon Europe-funded initiative dedicated to transforming agriculture in Africa through cutting-edge technologies. By integrating Copernicus Earth Observation data with IoT solutions, KijaniSpace empowers smallholder farmers with actionable insights for climate-smart farming. Central to this mission is the KijaniBox, a unique platform that simplifies access to satellite data and local IoT resources. Through innovative programs and pilot projects, KijaniSpace is fostering sustainability, boosting productivity, and building a resilient agricultural future for Africa.
The project, spanning from 2024 to 2027, aims to improve the availability of data, address climate change threats in the region, and engage local stakeholders to increase innovation locally. KijaniSpace focuses on the Lake Victoria Basin, a vital international waterway supporting transport, trade, and tourism while serving as a key resource for water, agriculture, and energy. Its rich biodiversity, thriving fisheries, and fertile agricultural lands sustain millions of livelihoods. Despite its vast potential, the region’s Blue Economy (i.e., sustainable use of water resources),remains largely untapped, presenting significant opportunities for growth and sustainability.
The KijaniBox serves as a comprehensive resource kit, integrating Copernicus data, IoT, as well as an innovation platform. It supports users including small and medium enterprises, universities, government agencies, and smallholder farmers by providing tools for training, prototyping, and pilot validation in crop and fishery sectors. The project also includes talent and innovation programs, all contributing to the regional development strategy.
The Lake Victoria Basin faces several challenges, including overfishing, declining water quality, stress on littoral zones due to construction and farming, deforestation, land degradation, and the negative effects of climate change. Additionally, the region experiences inadequate access to reliable weather information, poor climate-induced disaster risk management frameworks, and low adoption of technological innovations.
Our contribution to KijaniSpace includes providing weather, climate, and environmental datasets for the agricultural sector in the Lake Victoria region, implementing new Copernicus datasets, enhancing weather forecasts with IoT sensor technology, and offering climate risk technologies.
Through our involvement in KijaniSpace, meteoblue reaffirms its commitment to leveraging advanced weather data and technology to support sustainable agricultural practices and address climate challenges in vulnerable regions.
Stay tuned for regular updates on the progress and key developments of this project throughout its duration.
