Welcome to the Digital Earth Africa Sandbox

Access ready-to-use Earth observation notebooks, explore African landscapes, and turn satellite data into practical insights.

Getting Started Tools & Services Citation Additional Information Tech Alerts

Start here

Getting Started

Open the Sandbox User Guide ↗

When you sign in, notebooks from the Digital Earth Africa Sandbox Notebooks repository are loaded automatically. You can edit them, change the area of interest, and run your own analysis.

⚠ Important: save your work before ending a session

Notebooks and other files are not preserved automatically between Sandbox sessions. The environment refreshes to the default notebook repository when you next sign in.

Choose a backup method

⑴

Use GitHub

Track changes and move notebook updates between sessions using version control.

View GitHub instructions →

⑵

Download your files

Save notebooks to your computer, then upload them again during your next session.

Learn how to upload and download →

⑶

Connect Google Drive

Move files between the Sandbox and your Google Drive account.

View Google Drive setup →

Under the Sandbox terms and conditions , users are responsible for backing up and managing their files.

Need help?

Send your Sandbox questions to the Digital Earth Africa Helpdesk.

Email the Helpdesk

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Find the right resource

Explore Digital Earth Africa Tools and Services

Select a category below to quickly find notebooks, thematic applications, platform updates, and technical alerts.

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Sustainable Development Goals

Discover notebooks that support the monitoring and reporting of selected Sustainable Development Goal indicators.

Explore SDG notebooks →

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Thematic Applications

Browse notebooks grouped by themes such as agriculture, water, land, coastal environments, and climate.

Browse thematic notebooks →

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Tech Alerts

Check current Sandbox notices, pipeline updates, package changes, and other important service information.

View Tech Alerts →

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Attribution

Citing Digital Earth Africa Notebooks

When using Digital Earth Africa notebooks, code, or tools in your work, please include the citation below.

Burton, C., Neema, V., Boamah, E., Chong, E., Adams, C., Wellington, M., Sadiki, M., Moghaddam, N., Liu, L., Bishop-Taylor, R., Yuan, F., Leith, A., Jorand, C., Halabisky, M., Rebelo, L-M, and DE Africa Notebooks contributors (2024). Digital Earth Africa notebooks and tools repository. Geoscience Australia, Canberra. https://doi.org/10.26186/148997

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Additional Information

Licences

Notebook code is licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 .

Digital Earth Africa data is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 .

Community and Support

Ask a question in the DE Africa Slack community, post on GIS Stack Exchange using the open-data-cube tag, or report a notebook issue on GitHub.

Digital Earth Africa — Earth observation insights for a sustainable African continent

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