Addis Ababa, August 10, 2026 (FMC) — Ethiopia is increasingly using geospatial technology to move its Green Legacy Initiative beyond the scale of tree planting and toward more precise monitoring of where seedlings are planted, how much land is covered and how successfully they are taking root.
The Ethiopian Space Science and Geospatial Institute (SSGI) said the planting, monitoring and survival rates of seedlings under the Green Legacy Initiative are now being verified through geospatial technologies, including GPS measurements and satellite-image analysis.
The institute’s Lead Executive for Mapping, Tewodros Kassahun, said the use of scientific geospatial tools had significantly improved the quality and reliability of information generated through the initiative.
Under the system, locations where Green Legacy seedlings are planted are identified and recorded using GPS coordinates, enabling planting sites to be distinguished between those that have been properly registered and those that have not.
The approach is intended to strengthen the integrity of planting data by reducing duplication and inaccuracies in reported figures.
According to Tewodros, more than 291,000 hectares covered during Ethiopia’s recent one-day nationwide planting campaign were fully measured through GPS, with the area of each site calculated and organized spatially.
The new system also allows information submitted from planting sites to be cross-checked against satellite imagery once it reaches the relevant offices.
Selected sites are additionally subjected to physical verification by experts in the field, providing another layer of validation, the institute said.
The development marks an important evolution in the Green Legacy Initiative. Since its launch in 2019, Ethiopia has mobilized millions of citizens for large-scale annual planting campaigns, with the initiative increasingly incorporating environmental restoration, watershed rehabilitation, agroforestry and climate resilience.
The country’s Ministry of Agriculture identifies ecosystem restoration, forest expansion and protection of natural resources among the initiative’s central objectives.
The use of geospatial technology adds a different dimension to that effort: measuring not only how much is planted, but where it is planted and what happens afterward.
According to the SSGI official, the scientific assessment and field-verification work has also confirmed an increase in Ethiopia’s forest cover from 17 percent to 23.6 percent.
The 23.6-percent figure is consistent with Ethiopia’s official forest-cover mapping, which reported that forest cover had risen to 23.6 percent in 2023 from 17.2 percent in 2019.
The institute is now using 10 information centers, including systems dedicated to monitoring forests, crops and urban areas, to make geospatial information available to decision-makers and the Ministry of Agriculture, according to Tewodros.
The shift toward spatially verified environmental data reflects a broader effort by Ethiopia to apply space science, satellite observation and geospatial intelligence to national development.
The SSGI, established in 2022, has a mandate to collect, process and analyze geospatial data and apply it to areas including environmental management, agriculture, water resources, biodiversity conservation and climate-related planning.
For the Green Legacy Initiative, that technological layer is increasingly important as the scale of the campaign expands. Ethiopia launched its 2026 planting cycle with a target of 8 billion seedlings, building on the billions planted since the initiative began.
The significance of the initiative is therefore increasingly measured beyond the sheer number of seedlings placed in the ground.
Accurate spatial records, satellite verification, field inspections and monitoring of forest cover provide tools for determining whether the country’s massive restoration effort is translating into established vegetation and lasting environmental gains.
In this sense, Ethiopia’s Green Legacy is entering a more data-driven phase—where the progress of a tree planted in a nationwide campaign can increasingly be followed from the ground and verified from space.