About the Digital Earth Africa Map

The Digital Earth Africa (DE Africa) Map is a website for map-based access to spatial information. It’s developed by Data61 CSIRO in collaboration with Geoscience Australia.

DE Africa is leveraging international Earth Observation (EO) data and science to produce new information and services that benefit African countries. Through translating data into ready-to-use insights, more informed decisions about soil and coastal erosion, agriculture, deforestation,  desertification, water quality and changes to human settlements can be made. Learn more about DE AFrica at digitalearthafrica.org.

The DE Africa Map aims to provide easy access to spatial information on the African continent to help increase an understanding of using satellite data for better decisions.

The DE Africa Map is a fully open architecture. When you access data through it, you’re typically accessing the data directly from the department or agency who are the custodians.

The DE Africa Map:

  • provides easy access to spatial data to government, business and the public
  • facilitates the opening of data by federal, state and local government bodies
  • provides an open framework of geospatial data services that supports commercial and community innovation

Use the DE Africa Map

Start exploring the DE Africa Map at maps.digitalearth.africa. You can see what is available using the Explore data button to open the catalogue and expand a category you wish to browse. For specific instructions see our Help and FAQs.

Contribute to the DE Africa Map

Data: If you’re working on spatial datasets or producing them (such as CSVs with geolocation information) and you think they would be beneficial, you can contact the DE Africa Map product owner within Geoscience Australia and suggest inclusion in the Data Catalogue. The same process applies if you spot relevant spatial data on other applications, maps or websites: earthobservation@ga.gov.au.

TerriaJS software: The DE Africa Map is powered by TerriaJS, an open source software published on GitHub. You can become a contributor to the code or simply suggest new features, by submitting an issue directly in the open repository. Make sure you give a detailed description of the use case for the new functionalities.

Understand the DE Africa Map software

The DE Africa Map is Open Source software available as a Github project. The core platform, TerriaJS, was initially developed by Data61. The core software is licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"). You may not use the source code files except in compliance with the License. Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.

Additional Open Source Software Used

In developing the DE Africa Map, Data61 has used open source software and contributed back to it. The DE Africa Map leverages these excellent open source libraries:

The complete list is available with the DE Africa Map source code.

Attribute the data

The content presented in the DE Africa Map is sourced from a wide range of organisations.

Details about each data custodian and their contact details can be found in the catalogue.

Base Maps:

Terrain:

Geocoders:

Logo of Australian AidLogo of Geoscience AustraliaLogo of HelmsleyLogo of Data61/CSIRO