Building on its incredible achievements in cultivating a national community of practice committed to open biodiversity data, the Republic of Benin has elevated its GBIF membership status from Associate to Voting Participant.
The GBIF Benin node hosted in the Faculty of Agronomic Sciences at the University of Abomey-Calavi (UAC) has coordinated national activities since the country first became a Participant in 2004. This elevation of Benin’s status will give its delegation a greater voice within the GBIF network's decision-making and governance processes.
"Our involvement in GBIF has served as both catalyst and signal for the wide-ranging effects on digitalization and data science in Benin," said Dr Augustin Orou Matilo, an experienced science diplomat who leads the Applied Forestry Research Unit in the General Directorate of Water, Forests and Hunting of the country's Ministry of Living Environment and Transport in charge of Sustainable Development and the GBIF Benin delegation. "The increase in our own experts' skills and capacity for mobilizing, managing and applying data to both research and policy questions has now advanced to the point where the lessons we've learned can help smaller states both near and far benefit from our experience."
The role of the Biodiversity Information for Development programme (BID) proved critical in establishing GBIF Benin's highly effective data-sharing network. Under the leadership of long-time node manager and professor of forestry at UAC, Dr Jean Cossi Ganglo, a series of six Beninese-led BID projects (BID) have made GBIF Benin (relative to its size) an African data-publishing powerhouse.
Positive trends are visible across nearly every dimension, as the 38th largest of the continent's 54 countries has outperformed nearly all others in data mobilization. Only South African and Kenyan institutions have surpassed the more than 900,000 occurrence records shared by Benin's data-publishing institutions—and the density of data from the smaller West African country is three times that of Kenya, trailing only South Africa.
| Country | Occurrence records (excluding eBird) |
Land area (km²) | Occurrences per km² |
|---|---|---|---|
| South Africa | 31,273,298 | 1,221,037 | 25.61 |
| Kenya | 1,531,809 | 582,646 | 2.63 |
| Benin | 901,094 | 114,763 | 7.85 |
Perhaps equally important to GBIF Benin's success has been the establishment of a Master's degree programme in biodiversity informatics at UAC in 2017, which has built a cohort of well-trained specialists with data skills and literacy capable of supporting the country and region. Such is GBIF Benin's standing that it collaborated with GBIF France on a recent mentoring project for its West African neighbours in Cameroon.
"Publishing data alone is not enough. Like many other African countries, Benin has lacked homegrown scientists with academically robust skills in using data for decision-making, even in areas like biodiversity conservation and sustainable use," said Ganglo. "This situation prompted us to set up our Master's and PhD programme in biodiversity informatics, which to date has produced more than 60 Master's graduates from Togo, Côte d'Ivoire, Niger, Gabon, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, as well as Benin. We are happy and ready to support colleagues, institutions and governments in any African country with similar endeavours."
Researchers based at institutions in Benin have steadily increased GBIF-enabled publications, reaching its peak in 2023 with 14 peer-reviewed articles. This modest corpus covers a wide range of topics, including agriculture, conservation, ecology, human health, ecosystem services, and phylogenetics, often while exploring links to climate change.
Meanwhile, data shared by Benin's institutions has also supported hundreds of international research teams. Together, the country's ten most-cited data publishers have enabled more than 700 peer-reviewed articles along with 44 IUCN Red List assessments