Eastern and Southern Africa are entering a critical phase in the race to meet the global commitment to protect at least 30% of terrestrial, inland water, coastal and marine areas by 2030, with governments increasingly turning to geospatial technology to determine where conservation efforts should be focused and whether they are producing measurable results.
The target is embedded in the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, adopted at COP15 in 2022 and built around four long-term goals and 23 targets for 2030. Target 3 calls for at least 30% of land, inland waters and coastal and marine areas to be effectively conserved and managed through ecologically representative, well-connected and equitably governed systems of protected areas and other effective area-based conservation measures.
For countries across Africa, however, meeting that ambition is becoming less a question of drawing boundaries on maps and more a question of whether governments have the data needed to understand what those boundaries contain, how ecosystems are changing and whether protected areas are actually connected and effectively managed. That challenge is particularly significant in Eastern and Southern Africa, where biodiversity information is distributed across government departments, research institutions, conservation organisations and international databases. Different institutions may hold different datasets, use different standards or collect information at different scales, making it difficult to establish a consistent regional picture.
The Regional Centre for Mapping of Resources for Development (RCMRD) is attempting to address that gap through its Regional Centre of Excellence for Biodiversity, Forests and Seascape Ecosystems Management. The initiative, running from 2024 to 2028, provides geospatial information, biodiversity maps, Earth observation products, technical training and policy support across 24 countries in the region. RCMRD says the programme is designed to help governments improve conservation planning, biodiversity monitoring and reporting.
At the centre of the initiative is a cloud-based geospatial platform that brings together satellite imagery, protected-area information, biodiversity datasets, forest data and other environmental information. The objective is not simply to make more data available, but to make it usable for decisions that affect land management, conservation finance, ecosystem restoration and national biodiversity policy. The importance of that infrastructure is becoming clearer as countries move from making international commitments to demonstrating progress against them. The Convention on Biological Diversity requires governments to monitor and report progress under the Global Biodiversity Framework, creating growing demand for standardised, credible and accessible environmental information.
RCMRD’s work has also expanded beyond a conventional mapping function. In January 2026, the centre was designated a Subregional Technical and Scientific Cooperation Support Centre under the Convention on Biological Diversity, strengthening its role in helping countries in Eastern and Southern Africa implement the Kunming-Montreal framework. Its mandate includes biodiversity data production, capacity building, technology transfer and support for national implementation.
The regional platform has already been used to support national biodiversity reporting. In Kenya, RCMRD helped consolidate protected-area information into a central geoportal and supported technical teams preparing the country’s Seventh National Report to the Convention on Biological Diversity. The approach was intended to reduce the time required to collect, reconcile and validate information from multiple institutions while providing a common evidence base for national reporting.
That function has implications beyond reporting. Reliable spatial data can influence where governments direct conservation resources, where restoration projects are prioritised and how development proposals are assessed against biodiversity risks. It can also help identify gaps in protected-area coverage and areas where ecosystems that cross national borders require coordinated management. The regional dimension is particularly important because ecosystems do not stop at political boundaries. Forest landscapes, river systems, wildlife corridors, coastal ecosystems and migratory routes frequently extend across several countries. Fragmented national datasets can therefore obscure environmental pressures that are regional in nature.
RCMRD’s Biodiversity Outlook for Eastern and Southern Africa, known as BOESA, is emerging as another component of this regional data architecture. Launched in July 2026, the platform brings together geospatial intelligence, biodiversity data, country-level information and analytical tools covering the region. It includes a 30-by-30 tracker, a tool for validating protected and conserved-area data and a capacity-needs assessment tool linked to the Global Biodiversity Framework. The 30-by-30 tracker is particularly relevant because it shifts the conversation from a global percentage to country-level evidence. Governments need to know not only how much territory is classified as protected or conserved, but also what areas those designations cover, how they are governed and whether they meet the ecological and management requirements of Target 3.
Technology is also changing the economics of how this information can be delivered. Amazon Web Services provides the cloud infrastructure supporting the RCoE platform, allowing large volumes of satellite imagery and geospatial datasets to be stored and accessed without requiring each participating country to establish equivalent physical infrastructure. According to information provided by the project, Amazon S3 supports the storage and delivery of major geospatial datasets, while Amazon EC2 and AWS Amplify support the deployment of analytical tools and applications. The platform has recorded nearly 900,000 geoportal visits, while the programme says more than 5,000 people have been trained in geospatial technologies. For countries with limited technical and financial capacity, this scalability matters. Cloud-based systems can allow researchers, protected-area managers and policymakers in different countries to work from common datasets without having to reproduce the same infrastructure independently. It also creates the possibility of updating information more frequently as new satellite observations and field data become available.
The initiative’s international recognition has reinforced the growing role of African geospatial institutions in biodiversity management. In 2026, RCMRD received Esri’s Special Achievement in GIS Award for its work through the Regional Centre of Excellence. Esri cited the project’s use of geospatial technology and Earth observation to support biodiversity conservation, environmental monitoring and evidence-based decision-making across Eastern and Southern Africa. The recognition comes as the biodiversity agenda moves closer to a critical implementation deadline. The Convention on Biological Diversity has acknowledged the need to accelerate implementation of the Global Biodiversity Framework, while the 2030 deadline leaves governments with a limited window to translate national commitments into measurable outcomes.
Climate change makes that task more complicated. Rising temperatures, changing rainfall patterns, drought, wildfires, land degradation and shifting species distributions are altering ecosystems at a pace that can make static conservation maps outdated. Effective conservation therefore increasingly requires systems capable of monitoring change rather than simply documenting existing protected areas.
For Eastern and Southern Africa, the emerging lesson is that the 30-by-30 target will depend not only on political commitments or the creation of new protected areas, but also on the quality of the information behind those decisions. Governments need to know what they are protecting, where ecological gaps remain, how landscapes are changing and whether conservation measures are delivering results.
RCMRD’s experience suggests that geospatial infrastructure can become part of that institutional foundation. By linking Earth observation, biodiversity science, cloud computing, national reporting and technical capacity, regional platforms can help convert fragmented environmental information into evidence that governments can use.
The challenge now is to ensure that these systems remain integrated into national planning, adequately funded and accessible to the institutions and communities responsible for managing ecosystems on the ground. As the 2030 deadline approaches, the ability to measure conservation progress may prove nearly as important as the ambition to achieve it.
For Africa, the 30-by-30 agenda is therefore becoming not simply a conservation target, but a test of data infrastructure, institutional coordination and the ability of governments to turn environmental intelligence into practical decisions.
