The final stage of the Biodiversity Information for Development or BID programme has awarded funding to 27 new projects based in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Led by institutions in 17 different countries, these projects will receive 18-month grants ranging in value between €9,555 and €40,000 while mobilizing data on across a spectrum of topics, including food security, protected areas, threatened species, collections digitization, and conservation management. Cumulatively, the projects will match €707,130 in BID grants with €649,146 in co-funding. By advancing the goals of the BID programme, the grants will help projects increase the amount of biodiversity information available in the ‘ACP’ nations of sub-Saharan Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific.
Project representatives will kick off this cycle by taking part in a December data mobilization workshop hosted by the South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI) in Cape Town, for which online preparatory activites are already underway. The workshop participants who successfully complete the training will have their achievements certified through online badges.
Grants offered through this call include 12 national-scale projects focused on establishing or strengthening national biodiversity information facilities while increasing available biodiversity data in the country. In addition, 15 small project grants will mobilize data relevant for conservation priorities.
With institutions from eight countries—Ethopia, Liberia, Malawi, Mauritius Mozambique, Nigeria, South Sudan and Zambia—joining the programme as first-time grantees in this cycle, the BID programme has now supported projects led by 28 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa.
An external review committee selected these final-phase projects from a pool of 35 invited proposals drawn from 384 initial submissions received in April 2017, and they join 35 other BID-funded projects from Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific Islands.
| Title |
Type |
BID funding |
Est. co-funding |
| Capacity advancement for the Nigeria node of GBIF |
National |
€39,972 |
€15,597 |
| Establishing Metadata of Biodiversity Data Generated from Ramsar Sites in Tanzania |
Small |
€18,500 |
€1,500 |
| Building Capacity for Biodiversity Data Mobilization and Conservation in Liberia |
Small |
€20,000 |
€44,200 |
| Extension and management of the reference collections of bee pollinators in West Africa |
Small |
€20,000 |
€5,000 |
| Increasing data-mobilization capacity to conserve threatened medicinal plants in Ghana |
National |
€23,500 |
€11,500 |
| Getting the plants to all: dissemination of information from the collection of The Mauritius Herbarium |
Small |
€17,968 |
€15,838 |
| Alien, native, and endemic grasses of Madagascar |
Small |
€19,951 |
€7,420 |
| Mobilizing specimen data on bats and rodents from Zimbabwe |
Small |
€9,555 |
€20,150 |
| Data mobilization for crop protection against native and invasive pest species for sustainable agricultural production in Cameroon |
Small |
€15,000 |
€17,600 |
| Amphibian conservation in DR Congo through biodiversity capacity building and data mobilization |
Small |
€20,000 |
€18,050 |
| Mobilizing bat occurrence data in Zambia |
National |
€39,870 |
€68,194 |
| BRYOTAN |
National |
€27,367 |
€10,800 |
| Digitizing Odonata species of southern Nigeria |
Small |
€19,410 |
€6,000 |
| Mobilization of Biodiversity Data Related to Protected Areas and Threatened Species in Western Cameroon |
Small |
€19,500 |
€7,869 |
| Development of National Biodiversity Database System (NBDS) |
National |
€40,000 |
€10,000 |
| Developing an Accessible Biodiversity Information System for Sustainable Development in Cameroon |
National |
€34,850 |
€20,750 |
| Status and spatial diversity of Sorghum wild species in Malawi |
Small |
€19,776 |
€16,483 |
| Freshwater biodiversity of the Eastern Highlands of Zimbabwe: Assessing conservation priorities using primary species occurrence data |
Small |
€20,000 |
€63,600 |
| Digitizing national vegetable databases to improve food and nutritional security in Eastern Africa |
Small |
€19,631 |
€5,002 |
| Mobilization of data on non-timber forest species in biodiversity hotspots of Zimbabwe |
National |
€38,387 |
€23,000 |
| Digitizing the Matobo Hills Arachnid collections at the Natural History Museum of Zimbabwe |
Small |
€5,000 |
€58,500 |
| Prioritizing conservation management in an East African forest landscape |
National |
€39,773 |
€26,608 |
| Biodiversity Information for Development and Environmental Resilience in Southwestern Ethiopia (BIDERSE) |
National |
€39,770 |
€29,250 |
| Mobilizing primary biodiversity data for Mozambican species of conservation concern |
National |
€40,000 |
€58,464 |
| The Forgotten African Islands - Addressing the gap in freshwater biodiversity knowledge for the Indian Ocean Islands |
National |
€40,000 |
€64,000 |
| Strengthening Malawi's Biodiversity Information Facility |
National |
€40,000 |
€20,600 |
| Increasing capacity for conservation of threatened fish species through data mobilization and training |
Small |
€20,000 |
€13,641 |
The BID programme is funded by the European Union.