Citizen Science in Uganda

Internationally, Citizen Science is slowly developing into a field on its own, and its potential for research, policy development and sustainability is increasingly recognized⁠. It can be argued that especially in countries in the Global South where data collection is often very challenging and where this dearth of data is particularly problematic considering the sustainability challenges, Citizen Science can have the largest added value. Nonetheless, recent review studies in various fields suggest an increasing marginalization of less-developed regions with regard to the applications of Citizen Science.

Environmental research in central Africa, is often conducted by researchers from outside the region, and even from abroad. Data collection is therefore often organized in campaigns centered around short term, focused efforts. The trade-off of these approaches, is that dynamics over time are often missed and knowledge of local people on the terrain often left untapped. Citizen Science could allow accurate first-hand information of what is happening in the field. With this website we want to present a consortium of partners in Belgium and Uganda which groups researchers involved in citizen science in Uganda to monitor, investigate and communicate on environmental risks in Uganda. It is actually composed of several independent projects, with their own task leaders and funding.