About

CONTEXT

Africa's freshwater ecosystems are ecological treasures that support extraordinary biodiversity while providing invaluable services and resources for millions of people. These vital systems - from the Nile to the Okavango - face mounting threats from habitat destruction, overexploitation, invasive species and climate change. Effective protection, management and restoration of Africa’s freshwater ecosystems requires access to reliable, comprehensive data which has been critically lacking until now.

 

FOUNDATIONS

The Freshwater Research Centre (FRC) has spent the past seven years working with key partners to develop a Freshwater Biodiversity Information System (FBIS) for South Africa (Dallas et al. 2022, Dallas & Shelton 2024) – a platform that is now being effectively used to support improved freshwater science, conservation, management and decision-making at a national scale (e.g. Kajee et al. 2023a,b,c). Substantial groundwork has been done in developing and refining platform architecture and interface,  establishing links with other platforms and partners, developing data analysis tools, developing administration tools, and developing a multi-tenant sustainability model, in a effort to streamline data flows and connect data to high-level decision-making. Consultation with organisations working on freshwater monitoring, conservation and management at scale in Africa has revealed a widespread need for such a platform.

 

FBIS AFRICA PLATFORM

In 2025, the JRS Biodiversity Foundation provided a 4-year grant to the FRC to develop a Freshwater Biodiversity Information System for Africa – FBIS Africa. This project will build on the groundwork and success of FBIS (South Africa) platform, and scale it up for Africa. The FBIS-Africa platform will greatly improve access to, and analysis of, freshwater biodiversity data for Africa, providing data contributors with new channels to easily share their freshwater biodiversity data sets and harmonise them with existing datasets – critical steps towards improved freshwater monitoring and management in Africa.

 

VISION & MISSION

VISION Conservation and management of freshwater ecosystems and biodiversity in Africa is supported by data-driven decision making.

MISSION Provide open access to comprehensive and reliable freshwater biodiversity data for Africa through a user-friendly platform that offers powerful tools for data searches, downloads and visualisations.

 

OBJECTIVES

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.

 

IMPACT

The platform will directly support improved freshwater monitoring, management, policy and decision-making in Africa by mobilising, harmonizing, analysing and providing access to biodiversity data at an unprecedented degree in Africa. During the project, we will be engaging with the project partners, stakeholders and their networks to identify the data requirements for Africa’s main freshwater decision- and policy-making needs. Some of the kinds of outputs and decision-support tools that the FBIS-Africa platform will contribute towards include:

  • Biodiversity assessments.
  • Species Red List assessments.
  • Key Biodiversity Area delineation and monitoring.
  • Generating threatened, endemic or invasive species maps.
  • Strategic protected area expansion.
  • Biodiversity screening tools used for guiding sustainable development of freshwater resources.
  • Monitoring changes in species distributions, diversity or population trends.
  • Species data gap analyses to guide future survey efforts.
  • Boosting freshwater species datasets on the GBIF.

 

PARTNERSHIPS

Establishing and nurturing partnerships with key freshwater data users, providers and decision-makers across Africa is critical for the success of the FBIS Africa project. Our core partners include organisations working with freshwater biodiversity data at scale in Africa.  We will, also be regularly engaging with a broader community of freshwater data users and contributors across Africa, with whom we will share project updates, workshop invitations, training sessions and small grant opportunities.  

 

PUBLICATIONS

  • Dallas H & Shelton J. 2024. Biodiversity data at your fingertips: The Freshwater Biodiversity Information System. South African Journal of Science, 120(7/8). https://doi.org/10.17159/sajs.2024/18705
  • Kajee M, Dallas HF, Griffiths CL, Kleynhans CJ and Shelton JM. 2023. The Status of South Africa’s Freshwater Fish Fauna: A Spatial Analysis of Diversity, Threat, Invasion, and Protection. Fishes 8 (12): 571. https://doi.org/10.3390/fishes8120571
  • Kajee M, Dallas HF, Swanepoel A, Griffiths CL, and Shelton JM. 2023. The Freshwater Biodiversity Information System (FBIS) Fish Data: A Georeferenced Dataset of Freshwater Fishes Occurring in South Africa. Journal of Limnology 82 (s1). https://doi.org/10.4081/jlimnol.2023.2133 
  • Kajee M, Henry DAW, Dallas HF, Griffiths CL, Pegg J, Ven der Coll D, Impson D, Chakona A, Raimondo DC, Job NM, Paxton BR, Jordaan MS, Bills R, Roux F, Zengeya TA, Hoffman A, Rivers-Moore N, Shelton JM. 2023. How the Freshwater Biodiversity Information System (FBIS) is supporting national freshwater fish conservation decisions in South Africa. Frontiers in Environmental Science. Vol 11, https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fenvs.2023.1122223
  • Dallas HF, Shelton JM, Sutton T, Tri Ciputra D, Kajee M and Job N. 2022. The Freshwater Biodiversity Information System (FBIS) – mobilising data for evaluating long-term change in South African rivers, African Journal of Aquatic Science 47(3): 291-306, DOI: 10.2989/16085914.2021.1982672 

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All issues are public and available through Github