Africa’s freshwater ecosystems support a remarkable diversity of species and sustain the lives of millions of people across the continent. However, many of Africa’s freshwater systems are degrading due to threats like habitat destruction, over exploitation and climate change. This poses serious risks to biodiversity and ecosystem services. There is an urgent need for improved and strategic management, protection and restoration of Africa’s freshwater ecosystems. This requires access to reliable, current, comprehensive data on freshwater biodiversity.

Access to freshwater biodiversity data in Africa is however currently limited and existing platforms do not meet Africa’s freshwater monitoring and management needs. This project will address this by developing a freshwater biodiversity information system for Africa – FBIS-Africa. The platform will (1) improve access to freshwater biodiversity data across Africa, (2) provide powerful tools for analysing these data and (3) function as user-friendly African freshwater data repository. The platform will improve conservation and support sustainable utilization of Africa’s freshwater ecosystems. Platform impact will be measured by the quantity and quality of data made available through the platform, by the capacity developed for using the platform, and by the number of management and conservation actions supported by the platform.

The immediate objectives for the FBIS-Africa: A Freshwater Biodiversity System for Africa project are:

1. Develop the FBIS-Africa platform and mobile application
2. Build capacity for using and contributing to the FBIS-Africa platform
3. Identify and upload key spatial layers and filters
4. Generate taxon lists for selected freshwater groups in Africa
5. Improve access to freshwater biodiversity data across Africa
6. Develop and implement platform sustainability plan

FBIS-Africa will provide access to current, reliable, comprehensive freshwater datasets from multiple sources to support better-informed, data-driven freshwater science, management and decision-making throughout Africa. Importantly, by bringing together data from multiple sources, data gaps and data-poor regions can be identified and prioritized for future data collection.

Dr. Helen Dallas is the Executive Director of the Freshwater Research Centre in Cape Town, South Africa. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Cape Town and is a Research Associate of the University of Cape Town and Nelson Mandela University. As a founding Director of the Freshwater Research Centre, Dallas has been instrumental in growing the non-profit, which undertakes collaborative research in the region by linking with universities, NGOs, government organizations and consulting firms, to advance the understanding of freshwater systems while developing capacity through internship and post-graduate programs. Helen has over 35 years’ experience working on and leading collaborative research projects on the ecology, conservation and management of freshwater ecosystems in southern Africa. Her work focuses on three core areas: 1) river health, bioassessment and development of biomonitoring tools in Africa, 2) water quality, water temperature, climate change and aquatic ecosystems; and 3) the development of biodiversity information systems (databases) for conservation, management and decision-making. She has been instrumental in the development of aquatic biomonitoring protocols in South Africa, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Swaziland, Tanzania and Zambia. She is enthusiastic about the value of long-term data sets for freshwater ecosystems and has been involved in the development of a number of databases serving freshwater data including the Freshwater Biodiversity Information System (FBIS). She has developed learning material for biomonitoring and bioinformatics and provided extensive training on these.