The main objective of the National Flora Center (CNF) is to carry out all botanical studies in Côte d'Ivoire. Faced with the many challenges of remobilization of actors and data, the CNF received a BID grant in 2016 as part of a consortium to mobilize, digitalize and publish several datasets to the GBIF.org portal.
Based on the results obtained and surveys conducted during the previous project, the CNF proposes to increase the biodiversity data available for Côte d'Ivoire. Thus, Ivorian universities and institutions such as the UFR of Biological Sciences of the Universities Félix Houphouët-Boigny and Pelefero Gon Coulibaly, the Ministry of Environment through its Biodiversity and IPBES focal points will contribute to the data to be mobilized. In addition to plants, the data will also cover other groups of organisms that are very poorly represented in GBIF such as animals and microorganisms.
Thus, this project will contribute to the national mobilization of biodiversity data for research and decision-making in support of sustainable development, and then use and extend best practices for the mobilization and digitization of other biodiversity data. Finally, the project will develop sustainable national, regional or thematic networks to support data sharing and reuse.
Project progress
To carry out this project, several workshops were organised. These workshops were held both online (Virtual Data Mobilisation Workshop; Data Processing) and face-to-face for training in data collection and mobilisation.
A dataset of 973 occurrences has been published on the GBIF website. Data collection is ongoing to increase the number of occurrences already mobilised. The follow-up of all these activities was done through regular meetings and activity reports for each activity carried out.
For the 7 proposed deliverables, 12,470 occurrence data have been collected and these data are being cleaned for publication in the second half of the year.
Eight field missions were carried out in 6 localities to meet and explain the project to other partners. This raised awareness among nearly 70 people. Five training workshops were held, bringing together all the biodiversity stakeholders, in particular the representatives of the various universities and research institutions (UFHB, UNA, INHPB, UJLOG, UPGC, UMAN, UAO, CNRA, IPCI). From these different meetings, 15 partnership agreements were signed. The data mobilised made it possible to publish 18 datasets corresponding to 26976 plants and animals occurrence data. This made it possible to strengthen the database of Côte d'Ivoire in various bodies. The various actors have been made aware of the existence of GBIF, its importance and the use of the data on the GBIF portal.
