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Catherine Nakalembe: 2020 Africa Food Prize Laureate

Catherine Nakalembe is an assistant professor in the geographical sciences department at the University of Maryland and head of the Africa section of Nasa’s food and agricultural programme.

She was awared the 2020 Africa Food Prize for her work using satellite imagery to help farmers and governments to increase food security. Nakalembe uses satellite data examining agriculture and weather patterns combined with information about the crops gathered on the ground to build a model that can recognise patterns and aid in making predictions. Her model can help to inform decisions regarding irrigation and fertiliser use and can forecast using satellite estimates of rain and temperature which are communicated to the farmers either by local-language texts, radio messages or passed on through agricultural extension workers. Governments can also use her model to help prevent famines in communities by planning for disaster response in case of crop failure or flash flooding. Her early research prevented 84,000 people in Karamoja, Uganda from experiencing the severest effects of their extremely variable climate and lack of rainfall (BBC, 2020). 

Nakalembe with her award. 
Taken from: https://appliedsciences.nasa.gov/our-impact/news/catherine-nakalembe-selected-2020-africa-food-prize-laureate 

Nakalembe has carried out extensive research in the Karamoja region of Uganda. She describes the region as food insecure, primarily attributable to drought. Thanks to advances in satellite remote sensing, drought can now be characterised in data-sparse regions such as Karamoja.

Map of Uganda, Karamoja region highlighted in red. Taken from: https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/news/2019/06/19/wfp-uganda-food-aid-deaths-accused-negligence

Using the NDVI (normalised difference vegetation index) which is a commonly used satellite-based index to monitor the greenness of land, plant vigour, density and growth conditions, she aims to demonstrate the opportunities that a national drought monitoring system would have for Karamoja. The NVDI data for Karamoja demonstrated that it was sufficient in providing details for a spatial explicit drought assessment. Her study showed that satellite data could be used to progress long-term drought monitoring at a lower cost compared to traditional climate station-based monitoring in data scarce regions like Karamoja. This information is essential to food security and social safety net programs, as well as emergency response programs. The 2015 famine could have been avoided, had the extreme crop failure picked up earlier by satellite images been recognised. With the IPCC predicting an increase in extreme events such as drought in this region, satellite data is needed now more than ever to minimize the negative impacts on the communities (Nakalembe, 2018).

She now travels across the continent working with and training government departments on how to develop food security programmes. She also mentors young, black women to encourage them to enter the field of environmental sciences (BBC, 2020).

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