Deadline: August 29, 2025
Applications are open for the Africa Earth Observation (AEO) Challenge 2025. The Africa Earth Observation (AEO) Challenge is an annual open innovation challenge aimed at sourcing novel space technologies since 2016. This challenge seeks to drive entrepreneurial activity in the African space industry and promote awareness of the value of earth observation data across the continent and in multiple sectors such as water and food security, mining, logistics, insurance, and many more.
Earth observation gathers information about the planet’s physical, chemical, and biological systems via remote-sensing technologies. This information can then be used to monitor changes in natural and artificial environments.
The 2025 thematic areas include:
- Climate change; Agriculture, Disaster Risk Reduction;
- Natural Resource Monitoring; Sustainable Urban/Rural development;
- Healthcare.
Prizes
There are various prizes that will be up are for grabs for the Challenge finalists, including:
- Cash prizes in the form of a grant of up to $10 000 in total (to be distributed across top three winners).
- 4-month online incubation and virtual mentorship.
- Up to $ 10 000 worth of Amazon Web Services Activate credits (to be distributed across all three winners).
- Technical support will be available to the Challenge participants from the leading EOD specialising organisations.
- 3 months access to Maxar Imagery Portal Securewatch; Access to Planet Labs data & imagery for R&D use; Access to ESRI sample data, apps, notebooks, deep learning models.
- Intellectual property-related support services from intellectual property attorneys, Von Seidels.
- Various packages of subscriptions to ArcGIS, user conference pass and ESRI Imagery Summit.
- Feature in interviews and editorials via selected media channels.
Eligibility
- Open to businesses across the African continent;
- All submissions must demonstrate a clear application of EOD;
- Be early-stage funding/angel investor ready businesses.
Application
For more information, visit AEO Challenge.
