Tiger capacity building - Supporting water research in Africa

In response to the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD), which took place in September 2002 in Johannesburg, South Africa, ESA has launched the Tiger Initiative. TIGER aimed at contributing to a better use of water resources in Africa. One of the main activities carried out within the TIGER initiative is the support to water research in Africa. This is carried out through dedicated capacity building and training activities. In this context, ESA has funded projects for North-South knowledge and technology transfer and it has offered software and provided free access to space data (from ERS, ENVISAT, PROBA and SPOT) to a set of scientific research projects. Other partners such as UNESCO or CSA are also actively contributing by providing training, data and funding additional projects. In order to consolidate these projects, ESA has also set up a capacity building facility (TCBF) that is currently hosted at ITC. In order to be efficient, the TCBF required taking into account the current situation in African countries concerning the human, technical and institutional capacity. This is why it incorporates experts from different relevant area such as water managers, hydrologists, SAR and Optical data processing specialists, GIS experts, etc... It also makes use of existing African expertise promoting not only northsouth but also south-south cooperation by developing synergies with existing capacity building activities on the continent and by exploiting existing training and capacity building centres and infrastructures in Africa.