## 3 Geospatial Tools for Capacity Building  
Access to software tools is one of the prerequisites for Geospatial analysis using Earth observation data. They enable effective data storage and management, data display and manipulation, and representation. For most developing countries, the cost of acquiring and managing software licenses is the main limitation to capacity building and deriving value from EO data. The advent of the Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) model has brought an unprecedented number of software tools for analyzing EO and other Geospatial datasets. The FOSS model enables collaboration, exchange of ideas, information and knowledge in an effective and efficient manner, thus promoting swift and cost-effective development and deployment of Geospatial tools. As a result, organizations such as Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGEO) were founded to support the collaborative development of powerful, secure and flexible geospatial software tools and promote their use. At the time of writing this manuscript, OSGEO provides a range of tools that can be categorized as content management systems, spatial databases, desktop and interactive applications, Geospatial libraries, metadata catalogues and web-based platforms (Figure 3). Similarly, major satellite data providers such as the European Space Agency (ESA), the US Geological Survey (USGS), the National Aeronautical and Space Administration (NASA), and the National Institute for Space Research (INPE), increasingly provide FOSS tools through command-line interfaces, libraries and desktop applications to ease the utilization of various datasets and formats. For example, the Sentinel Application Platform (SNAP) provides several desktop toolboxes for ingestion and manipulation of Sentinel data which is in a SAFE format. The FOSS tools provide immense opportunities for capacity building in African countries, overcoming limitations related to software license costs and limited control of workflows [57]. Figure 3: Some of the popular open-source software useful for capacity building in EO using data from a variety of satellite missions as well as other Geospatial data. However, the rate of adoption of these tools for operational purposes and in the implementation of spatial data infrastructures to support spatial planning and socio-economic development is still limited. This can be attributed to several factors, including among others; the lack of targeted marketing of FOSS tools as opposed to proprietary tools, the lack of adoption at institutions of higher learning due to lack of awareness and availability of discounted proprietary software licenses, perceived steep learning curve compounded by constant bugs and updates, the lack of comprehensive functionalities and batch processing capabilities to perform most remote sensing and GIS operations until recently, and infrequent capacity-building activities utilizing FOSS tools in Africa by African institutions. Indeed, the wider adoption of FOSS tools requires increased capacity building, targeted at technicians and practitioners. In addition, there is a growing trend towards online mapping applications operable on mobile and desktop computers, such as Google Earth, ESRI/ArcGIS Explorer and NASA World Wind. These provide simple interfaces for accessing and analyzing satellite data by non-experts such as decision and policy makers. In particular, Google Earth has been utilized in numerous applications, including, among others, land use/land cover mapping [58; 59], ecological and agricultural assessment [60; 61], human settlement mapping [62], and hydrological mapping [63]. Furthermore, Google Earth is known for its powerful integration of medium- to very high-resolution imagery from sensors such as Landsat (15-30 m) and QuickBird (60 cm) in a robust virtual globe environment, proving capabilities for data visualization and exploration, data capturing through on-screen digitizing, validation of land cover maps, and modelling and simulation of time-varying phenomena [64; 65; 66].