Join us for our community meeting where Ian Ocholla presents his work on livestock detection and counting in Kenyan rangelands using remote sensing and deep learning techniques.

• Date & Time: Thursday, March 26 at 4:00 PM UTC+3

Ian Ocholla is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Cape Town (UCT), South Africa. He is based at UCT AI Initiative and collaborates with the GeoAI-Africa Network. His research focuses on developing geospatial metadata frameworks that support open access, standardized, machine-learning-ready datasets for the African continent.

Ian holds a PhD in Atmospheric Sciences from the University of Helsinki, where his research focused on the use of deep learning and computer vision applied to Earth observation imagery for livestock management across African rangelands.

Join us for our community meeting where Aurel Davy Tchokponhoue and Bernardin Ligan present their research on prediction and uncertainty quantification of drought in North Benin.

• Date & Time: Thursday, February 26 at 4:00 PM UTC+3

Aurel Davy Tchokponhoue is a PhD candidate under joint supervision between UM6P (University Mohammed VI Polytechnic) in Morocco and EPFL in Switzerland, and part of the Excellence in Africa — 100 PhDs for Africa program. His research focuses on trustworthy artificial intelligence, particularly uncertainty quantification in machine learning models for medical applications and sustainability challenges.

Bernardin Ligan is a PhD student at UM6P. His research focuses on artificial intelligence and remote sensing, with a particular emphasis on hyperspectral imaging. He works on efficient and alternative modeling approaches to Transformers and parameter-efficient fine-tuning of foundation models for Earth observation. More broadly, he is interested in leveraging GeoAI to address sustainable development challenges.

We're excited to share that GeoAI-Africa has been featured in GIM International with a perspective article titled "Addressing the Most Pressing African Challenges with GeoAI".

The article outlines how GeoAI-Africa is working to make advanced geospatial tools accessible, contextualized, and impactful across the continent — tackling some of Africa's most urgent challenges:

• Food insecurity — 307 million people affected in 2024 alone. We are training our members to build pipelines that detect crop stress, classify crop types, and estimate yields using satellite imagery and machine learning.
• Climate disasters — Record floods in 27+ countries displaced ~4 million people in 2024. Our community works on rapid workflows that convert raw satellite feeds into damage assessments within hours.
• Rapid urbanization — ~230 million urban dwellers in sub-Saharan Africa live in informal settlements. Our mapping workflows extract building footprints from imagery, to help city planners deliver services where they're needed most.

None of this happens in isolation. GeoAI-Africa deliberately couples grassroots energy with technical expertise from leading organizations through mentorship, workshops, hackathons, and hands-on training at events.

Our model is simple but powerful: start with real problems, learn together, and grow capacity through open collaboration.

Join us for our community meeting where Anna Boser from the University of California, Santa Barbara presents her work on small-scale irrigation mapping in Zambia for climate adaptation.

• Date & Time: Thursday, January 22 at 4:00 PM UTC+3

Anna Boser is a geospatial AI researcher who builds satellite and machine learning tools to study agricultural landscapes, with a focus on water use under climate stress. Her work aims to inform sustainable water management strategies in water-scarce regions including California and parts of Sub-Saharan Africa.

Anna holds a BA in Statistics from UC Berkeley, where she was recognized as the top graduating senior in 2020, and is the 2024 recipient of the AGU Science for Solutions Award.

Join us for our community meeting where William Ogallo from Google Research presents his work on forecasting food insecurity.

• Date & Time: Thursday, December 11 at 4:00 PM UTC+3

William Ogallo is a Senior Research Scientist at Google and an advisor to the GeoAI-Africa community, bringing deep expertise in applying AI to food security challenges across the African continent.

Join GeoAI-Africa and UCT as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in GeoAI for Sustainable Development!

Tackle Africa's environmental, agricultural, and climate challenges using AI and geospatial science. Lead research in land cover mapping, climate risk, and urban dynamics, with access to UCT's HPC and cloud platforms and GeoAI-Africa's network.

• Compensation: R400,000 per annum (tax-exempt) + travel support
• Duration: 1-year fellowship (renewable), starting Q1 2026
• Environment: Work with Shocklab & GeoAI-Africa network in Cape Town

Who should apply:

• PhD (within 5 years or near completion) in Geoinformatics, AI, Data Science, or related field
• Skilled in Python/R/Julia & geospatial/ML tools (GDAL, PyTorch, etc.)
• Passion for sustainability and impactful research

How to apply: Submit CV, research statement, PhD certificate, and references to jonathan.shock@uct.ac.za and CC geoai-africa-core-team@googlegroups.com.

Join us for our community meeting where Gedeon Muhawenayo from Arizona State University, School of Computing and Augmented Intelligence (SCAI), presents his work on delineating field boundaries with Fields of The World models and tools.

• Date & Time: Thursday, September 25 at 4:00 PM UTC+3

Gedeon is a PhD student at Arizona State University applying machine learning to remote sensing for cropland mapping and field boundary delineation.

We're excited to invite you to a hybrid workshop focused on the transformative power in unifying and leveraging African geospatial data for innovation and impact.

• Date: June 20
• Time: 3:00 PM – 5:00 PM (EAT)
• Location: Microsoft Conference Room, 7th Floor, Dunhill Tower, Waiyaki Way, Nairobi
• Format: Hybrid (Join us in person or online)

This workshop will bring together experts, practitioners, and enthusiasts in geospatial technology and AI to explore collaborative solutions and share insights on the future of geospatial data in Africa.

Let's shape the future of GeoAI in Africa — together.