On behalf of AEGOS group, K. Tadesse delivered a presentation on “Mineral Development and the Role of AEGOS in Africa”.
After a background statement on African mineral resources potential and information sources disseminated over Europe and Africa, K. Tadesse showed that it is against this background that the AEGOS project was initiated to assist in the discovery, development and sustainable use of resources of geological origin such as minerals and non-energy raw materials, groundwater and geothermal energy that require knowledge based on data, information and expertise. The establishment and running of AEGOS spatial data infrastructure is particularly a key issue in Africa, not only for development of the African countries, but also for the world’s future to provide a standardised high quality data which would raise the chances of discovery of minerals to meet the demand of the growing population. Since no country is self-sufficient in natural resources, the need for such a georesources observation system was also placed in the perspective of improving the negotiating capacity of the countries as part of a win-win situation in the framework of international cooperation between EU and Africa. The efforts made by the delegation to promote AEGOS were well received to significantly assist in securing EU funding for the implementation of AEGOS Phase 2 as reflected by the First ACP Ministerial Meeting in their “Brussels Declaration on the Sustainable Development and Management of the Mineral Resources Industry of the ACP States” of December 15, 2010 where the meeting emphasised to “encourage the development of transparent, shared, interoperable public information systems on geology, mineral resources, and environment while ensuring synergies between existing initiatives”. In this regard the participants took note of the AEGOS project and the UN-funded Natural Resources Information Exchange (NRIE), and “called for the support by the EU and other development partners to ensure the operationalisation of the two initiatives. Furthermore, the participants underscored the need to build synergies between these and comparable platforms for public data and information sharing”. R. S. DIENE (MMI, Senegal) Work package 4 co-leader K. TADESSE (SEAMIC) Work package 6 co-leader
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