The Africa Soil Information Service (AfSIS) is developing a practical, timely, and cost-effective soil health surveillance service to map soil conditions, set a baseline for monitoring changes, and provide options for improved soil and land management. Because knowledge about the condition and trend of African soils is highly fragmented and dated, there is an urgent need for accurate, up-to-date, and spatially referenced soil information to support agriculture in Africa. This coincides with developments in technologies that allow for accurate collection and prediction of soil properties. The system will facilitate the identification of areas at risk of soil degradation and corresponding preventive and rehabilitative soil management interventions based on analysis of what works and what doesn't.

This project will build on recent advances in digital soil mapping, infrared spectroscopy, remote sensing, statistics, and integrated soil fertility management to improve the way that soils are evaluated, mapped, and monitored, while significantly reducing the costs to do so, and to disseminate innovative soil management methods such as the combination of inorganic fertilizers with organic inputs that improve crop yields while enhancing the environment. Dissemination and training will make the project's outcomes highly accessible to farm communities, public and private extension services, national agricultural research and soil survey organizations, the fertilizer sector, project and local planners, national and regional policymakers, and scientists. The efforts in Africa are part of a wider, global effort to digitally map the world's soil resources, and this project will help catalyze the global effort.