The East and Southern Africa Forest Observatory (OFESA) was launched at the Global Landscapes Forum (GLF)’s Nairobi conference in late 2018, with twin goals of supporting improved forest monitoring and reporting practices, and developing a data governance framework for the countries in the region. The Observatory’s geoportal, hosted by the Kenya-based Regional Centre for Mapping of Resources for Development (RCMRD), currently receives forest data from contributing countries, where it can be accessed to tease out trends and learn from others’ examples. Now, OFESA’s coordinators are looking beyond the bounds of the project and considering what kind of framework and arrangements are required to ensure the countries continue to share this kind of data over the longer term. They recently carried out scoping and actor-mapping exercises with national forest agencies, NGOs, civil society and community-based organisations, private sector actors, and academia in Uganda, Kenya, and Tanzania, with plans to do the same in Mozambique and Ethiopia over the coming months.
