# Education and Training in Applied Remote Sensing in Africa: The ARCSSTE-E Experience
## 1 Introduction  
The United Nations General Assembly charged the Programme on Space Applications (PSA), of the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA), with the \"development of a fellowship programme for in-depth training of space technologists and applications specialists, with the help of Member States and relevant international organisations, and the establishment and regular up-dating of lists containing available fellowships in all States and relevant international organizations\" following the outcome of the Second United Nations Conference on the Exploration and Peaceful Uses of Outer Space in 1982 (UNISPACE II) [1]. The focus was to build indigenous capacities for the development and utilisation of Space Science and Technology, particularly at the local level. To fulfill this objective, the UNOOSA, with the active support of its specialised agencies and other international organisations, was mandated to lead an international effort to establish Regional Centres for Space Science and Technology Education in existing national/regional educational institutions in developing countries [2]. UNOOSA then established the first regional centre in India in 1995. In 1998, two other Regional Centres were established in Morocco and Nigeria, for French-speaking and English-speaking countries in Africa, respectively. With the success of UNSPACE III, the UN General Assembly (UNGA) decided to strengthen the activities of the UNOOSA [3] with the establishment of the Regional Center in Mexico, with a campus in Brazil, in 2003. Two Regional Centres were later established in Jordan and Chinain 2012 and 2014, respectively. Figure 1 shows the locations of the centres, which have become a successful case study regarding cross border education [4]. The figure also shows, countries in Africa that are being served by ARCSSTE-E in red. The mandate of the Regional Centres is to educate and train scientists and researchers in thematic areas of space applications. Curricula for four thematic areas were developed at the conception of the initiative, namely: Remote Sensing/Geographic Information Systems; Satellite Communications; Satellite Meteorology; and, Basic Space Science/Atmospheric Physics [5]. These curricula were revised in 2001 to include newer developments in each of the thematic areas [6]. In 2013, a curriculum for Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) was developed, and the course was introduced into the programme. A year later, the curriculum for Space Law was introduced. Efforts are currently underway for the development of a curriculum for Satellite Engineering. The following sections discuss the education and training activities of ARCSSTE-E and its successes and challenges, as well as efforts by ARCSSTE-E to improve on its programmes. We highlight how past participants have benefitted from the programmes and applied the knowledge and skills that were gained in their professions/careers. The input of past participants was obtained through a survey that was conducted in 2019. A similar survey was conducted on the cohort of 2019 during a foundational course on remote sensing to assess the effectiveness of the training methodology employed, to enhance learning. The best practices that we highlight and recommendations for improvement of the best practices at the end of the paper could be useful for international educational institutions. Figure 1: Map showing the locations of the UN-affiliated Regional Centres for Space Science and Technology Education. Regions that are highlighted in red represent the countries covered by ARCSSTE-E.  
Programmes of the African Regional Centre for Space Science and Technology Education in English (ARCSSTE-E)  
Nigeria was selected to host the Regional Centre for the English-speaking African countries.