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Agriculture

Supporting Agricultural Extension Services in Africa

Smallholders in Africa often lack access to the inputs and information that can help boost their productivity and resilience to major sources of volatility including climate shocks. One key reason for this inadequacy of agricultural extension services is the absence of data that accurately map where croplands are and what they grow. Making such maps is challenging because it requires the ability to use satellite imagery to accurately map the boundaries of smallholders’ fields over large areas and accurately label these crop fields. Marsh Institute Researcher Lyndon Estes (Geography) recently received funding from the Lacuna Fund to develop a crop field boundary labelling platform covering two mapping regions in Africa (Western/Central Africa and Eastern/Southern Africa). The project A Region-Wide, Multi-Year Set of Crop Field Boundary Labels for Sub-Saharan Africa will also provide technical support and guidance to project partners on how to use the platform.

For full project descriptions, see the Marsh Institute Research Projects web page.