Soil health information is a critical tool for identifying intervention areas to reverse land degradation, providing tailored fertilizer recommendations, and supporting policy processes, among myriad other benefits. Multistakeholder actors in Africa are already collecting data and sharing them with their wider networks, but many of these data sharing systems are limited in scope, cumbersome or locked behind institutional barriers. Fostering collaborative soil knowledge exchange could bolster the uptake of soil health data to drive evidence-based action on behalf of food systems, the environment, and people. Despite new continental momentum toward scaling soil health supported by data, there is limited stocktaking or documented baselines on current initiatives toward scaling soil health. This review seeks to address this gap and support the consolidation of efforts and initiatives at continental and national levels.

The results of this review can help prioritize and streamline efforts to build a collaborative soil data sharing community toward enhanced action in Africa under the Norad-funded initiative, Establishing an ecosystem of soil data-driven services.

This review provides a stocktake of the status and maturity of SISs in six African countries: Ethiopia , Ghana , Kenya , Malawi, Rwanda , and Tanzania based on a desk review and stakeholder consultations. The assessment examined eight core dimensions:

1. Existence of an online portal;

2. Data Content and Spatial Extent/ Coverage;

3. Use of the Data;

4. Field Data Collection and Sampling Standards;

5. Sample Handling and Laboratory Quality Assurance;

6. Data Management and Infrastructure;

7. Data Analysis and Modelling Capacity;

8. Institutional Arrangements and Stakeholders

The findings reveal uneven progress across countries. Ethiopia and Rwanda have established online platforms, yet these systems are not fully leveraged for decision-making. Ghana and Tanzania made significant advances through the AfSIS Phase II project (GhaSIS and TanSIS), but progress slowed once project funding ended. Kenya and Malawi remain in the early stages of SIS development. Across all countries, the most consistent progress has been in building momentum on the importance of soil data and soil sample data collection, largely driven by externally funded projects.

In 2024, CIFOR-ICRAF and Varda Foundation piloted a soil knowledge exchange initiative in Kenya and Tanzania, funded by the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (NORAD). The pilot focused on identifying barriers and opportunities for building a collaborative soil data ecosystem and directly shaped the project's design.

Building on the pilot initiative, CIFOR-ICRAF and the Varda Foundation, with support from NORAD, are now launching a new three-year initiative to create a dynamic ecosystem of soil data-driven services across Kenya, Ghana, Malawi, and Tanzania.

From 27 - 28 January 2026, the project consortium met at the CIFOR-ICRAF office in Nairobi for a project inception meeting.

On 27 May 2025, the Vision for Adapted Crops and Soils (VACS) and CA4SH co-hosted a webinar exploring the role of multi-stakeholder action in addressing financing, implementation, and knowledge barriers to scaling soil health solutions.

Healthy soil is the very foundation of our food systems and provides several vital ecosystem services, from carbon sequestration to improving food and nutrition security, to regulating the water cycle to hosting biodiversity. However, land degradation negatively impacts over 3.2 billion people globally. This webinar highlighted the critical role of healthy soil for ecosystem restoration, climate adaptation and mitigation, biodiversity, and food and nutrition security, as well as advancements in monitoring soil health using field assessments, data analytics, Earth Observation, and citizen science.