Integrating Satellite Data with Local Knowledge for Community Empowerment
Original post published on the SERVIR news site
iKON: A Game-Changer for Pastoralists in Senegal
A new wave of African researchers is embracing transformative opportunities through the Small Innovation Grants Program (SIGP), implemented by SERVIR West Africa (SERVIR WA), a joint project between USAID and NASA, in partnership with ICRISAT, Manobi Africa and AIMS.
Over the past two years, SIGP has served as a catalyst for youth innovators like Ms Das Dores Ngueussie Ngamini, a Cameroonian national and member of the inaugural cohort in 2002, empowering them to revolutionize Earth Observation services in West Africa. Ngueussie’s project, “Tools and Processes for Reconciling Satellite/Model and Farmer Crowdsourced Information,” hosted at Columbia University and ICRISAT, has achieved significant milestones.Her main objective was to adapt the iKON game for pastoralists and implement it in Senegal. iKON, developed by Columbia Climate School’s, International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI), fosters direct communication between pastoral communities and WENDOU (Water Environment Dashboard for Observation), supporting users in Ferlo, Senegal.