# Towards the Development of Agenda 2063 Geo-Portal to Support Sustainable Development in Africa
###### Abstract
Some of the geoportals that have been successfully implemented to promote and govern the sharing and reuse of geospatial data include the Infrastructure for Spatial Informationin the European Community (INSPIRE) Geoportal-European Community Infrastructure for Spatial Information, GeoPortal. Bund for Germany, Geoportal in France, GeoNorge in Norway, and IDEE in Spain [28]. In a recent review of international and national geoportals, an inventory by [PERSON] [31] showed that most of the geoportals were developed with the prime objective of serving as an electronic infrastructure for e-government and as dissemination platforms for open government data. Some mature national geoportals include Canadas' Open Data, France's geoportal, India's geoportal, United States Geospatial One-Stop, US's geoportal, and China's geoportal. Largely, these portals aim to provide a web platform to enable the sharing of national datasets to increase transparency and accountability in government. Other popular geoportals such as INSPIRE are targeted towards the provision of geospatial datasets to member states of the European Union. Space agencies, surveying, and mapping bureaus are also at the forefront of providing geoportals for the dissemination of satellite data, aerial photography, maps, and other digital geospatial datasets [32]. Popular examples include the European Space Agency (ESA), Copernicus Open Access Hub, and NASA Earth data portal. Lately, several geoportals have also been launched in Africa. In our review of African geoportals, we observed that most geoportals serve as platforms for geospatial data dissemination for specific projects, examples include the MESA SADC Geoportal, National OCIMS Geoportal, and the WASCAL Geoportal. A similar observation was made for continental, regional, and national geoportals such as the RCMRD Geoportal, Africa Geoportal, and GeoCameron. From our assessment, the current geoportals are not specifically aimed at tracking Agenda 2063 development indicators but serve as online geospatial data distribution platforms. In many cases, the geoportals also lack the basic analytical capability and spatial analysis functionality. While several geoportals already exist internationally as recently reviewed by [PERSON] [31], currently none of them are targeted towards the monitoring and evaluation needs of Agenda 2063 on a continental scale. Similarly, an inventory of geoportals done by [PERSON] [31] clearly shows that African countries lack a common online platform for uploading, access, visualizing, storing, analysing, and disseminating development information related to Agenda 2063. To bridge the gaps, there is a need to provide a geoportal dedicated to the monitoring of Agenda 2063 development indicators that has analytical and spatial analysis capability. To achieve its strategic goals, the African Union (AU) seeks to strengthen its capacity to collect, analyse, and evaluate data to support the implementation of its developmental agenda [4; 5; 6]. Acute shortage of data to support the monitoring, evaluation, and comparison of developmental programmes has been stressed as one of the problems facing Africa. AU affirms that the implementation of the Agenda 2063 strategic plan is knowledge-driven and requires both qualitative and quantitative data to support monitoring and evaluation. In the same vein, AU recognises the need for monitoring and evaluation systems at country, regional, economic, community, and continental level to track the implementation of the set targets. The plan also emphasizes the need for the establishment of a common platform to facilitate the preparation of integrated monitoring and evaluation reports. Furthermore, the need to generate reliable, timely, and disaggregated data using appropriate systems for accurate reporting has been highlighted as critical to supporting evidence-based planning. Recalling that Agenda 2063 aims to achieve socio-economic and political transformation through the optimum use of natural resources, the use of geographic information becomes instructive.