On March 15, the cooperative agreement to implement Phase II of SERVIR West Africa was awarded to the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), which will be leading the consortium. This agreement extends SERVIR’s activities in the region for the next five years, including support for the USAID Sahel Regional Office and activities that will be part of the U.S. Global Food Security Strategy. The award will also officially expand the hub’s focus countries of Burkina Faso, Ghana, Niger, and Senegal to also include Mali and Nigeria. In addition to ICRISAT, the Phase II hub consortium will continue to include the partner organizations — the Agrometeorology, Hydrology and Meteorology (AGRHYMET) Regional Center, the African Regional Institute for Geospatial Information Science and Technology (AFRIGIST), the Centre for Remote Sensing and Geographic Information Services (CERSGIS), and the Centre de Suivi Ecologique (CSE) — and will also add organizations such as the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS) and the Institut Supérieur d'Études Spatiales et des Télécommunications (ISESTEL) to the network, along with support from Columbia University’s Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN) and the International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI), and the University of Florida. The SERVIR Science Coordination Office at NASA provides science and geospatial technology backstopping and coordination across the wider SERVIR network.
