The Blue Economy generated nearly US$300 billion for the African continent in 2018, creating 49 million jobs. These benefits—food security, livelihoods, biodiversity, and climate resilience—depend on the health of coastal and marine areas. Safeguarding productive coastal landscapes is crucial for leveraging future Blue Economy opportunities, such as sustainable blue energy, aquaculture, and blue carbon. African countries need greater investment in marine and coastal data production for better knowledge and tracking.
The World Bank’s Blue Economy for Resilient Africa Program will provide multisectoral support to coastal and island states to scale up their Blue Economies while managing risks. New technologies, including satellite and drone-based Earth observation, are revolutionizing data collection, processing, and visualization. Cloud computing, machine learning, and artificial intelligence are enabling more accessible and usable data.
Key challenges include fragmented data systems, limited access, institutional capacity gaps, and poor internet connectivity (only 22% of the population has internet access). Leveraging "BlueTech" can drive sustainable development, but requires investments in enabling infrastructure and services.
Emerging technologies are disrupting traditional data, production, and stakeholder value chains. For example, "BlueTech" options include in-situ monitoring, Earth observation, crowdsourcing, and cloud services for data management; big data and AI for analysis; open data APIs and visualization for access; and platforms for outreach.
Transformative innovations like 3D printing, automation, robotics, and blockchain are reshaping how decisions are made and how stakeholders interact. Moving up the data value chain to produce accessible knowledge products is essential for informed decision-making. Strengthening data organization and access among governments, private sector, academia, and civil society will attract financing and generate multisectoral insights.
