
Rui Figueira took part, as a mentor, of the African Regional Meeting from the Biodiversity Information for Development (BID) Programme, that was held from the 3rd to the 6th of September 2019, in Yaoundé, Cameroon. The meeting had more than 50 colaborators from African Nodes or from projects financed by BID, and was organised by Governing Board of GBIF and by the Ministry of the Environment, Nature Protection and Sustainable Development from the Cameroon.
The objectives for the meeting were the reflection over the impact of BID in the African region, the identification of priorities and oportunities for the future to secure the continuation of efforts to mobilize data in the region, but also to build capacity through a workshop for the implementation of a GBIF node.
The workshop had a very strong pratical component, either on the evaluation of BID results, as on the capacity building for nodes. The mentors facilitated the discussions and helped with the conclusions, in the different workshop groups.
Moreover, during the event there was a bioblitz, at the Integral Reserve from the Millennium Ecologic Museum, which is 25 km northeast of the capital. The Reserve is constitute by secodary ancient forest, that belongs to the equatorial forest from the Congo basin. The registers from bioblitz were done through the citizen science platform iNaturalist, under the project on this link: https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/gbifbid-africa-workshop-cameroon-ch....
The workshop arose great interest nationally and was part of the news.
The BID is a Programme from GBIF and is financed by the European Comission under the EuropAID, which has as an objective, data mobilization and capacity enhancement for the use of biodiversity information to support decision making.