Our Research

At XylemLab, our projects are at the heart of our mission to revolutionize agricultural monitoring and food security across Africa and beyond. Each initiative is designed to merge cutting-edge satellite technology with local expertise, creating innovative, scalable solutions that address real-world challenges. From collaborating with NASA and GEOGLAM to enhance crop monitoring to working with AGRA and Lacuna Fund to empower local communities with data-driven tools, our projects span the intersection of science, technology, and sustainability. Together with African governments, universities, and global partners, we are building a future where technology and local knowledge combine to drive impactful, sustainable change in agriculture. Explore our projects to see how we’re transforming challenges into opportunities for growth and resilience.

On-Going Research

  • Conflict, Displacement and Landuse

  • Drought Mapping and Monitoring

  • Cropland Mapping

  • Weather Shocks on Dietary Quality

  • Mapping Extreme Events

  • Helmets Labeling Crops

  • Yield and Production Estimation

RECENT FUNDED PROJECTS

  • Regional Food Balance Sheet

  • Harvest Africa

  • Helmets Labeling Crops

  • NASA SERVIR

  • Enabling Crop Analytics at Scale (ECAAS)-Kenya

  • EO-FARM SwissRe Foundation

  • Optimizing Crop Yield Data Collection for Supply Chain Enhancement

  • Rufin P, Meyfroidt P, Akinyemi FO, Estes L, Ibrahim ES, Jain M, Kerner H, Lisboa SN, Lobell D, Nakalembe C, Persello C. To enhance sustainable development goal research, open up commercial satellite image archives. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 2025 Feb 18;122(7):e2410246122.

  • Catherine Nakalembe, Hannah Kerner, Ivan Zvonkov et al. A Framework for EO-Based National Agricultural Monitoring (EO-NAM)- For the African Context, 06 September 2024, PREPRINT (Version 1) available at Research Square [https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-4731424/v1]

  • Nakalembe, Catherine, Taryn Devereux, and Alana Ginsburg. "Whose priorities? examining inequities in Earth observation advancements across Africa." Perspectives of Earth and Space Scientists 5.1 (2024): e2023CN000220.

  • Nakalembe, Catherine, et al. "A 40-year remote sensing analysis of spatiotemporal temperature and rainfall patterns in Senegal." Frontiers in Climate 7 (2025): 1462626.

  • Kebede, E.A., Abou Ali, H., Clavelle, T., Froehlich, H.E., Gephart, J.A., Hartman, S., Herrero, M., Kerner, H., Mehta, P., Nakalembe, C. and Ray, D.K., 2024. Assessing and addressing the global state of food production data scarcity. Nature Reviews Earth & Environment, 5(4), pp.295-311.

  • Kerner H, Nakalembe C, Yang A, Zvonkov I, McWeeny R, Tseng G, Becker-Reshef I. How accurate are existing land cover maps for agriculture in Sub-Saharan Africa?. Scientific Data. 2024 May 10;11(1):486.

  • Kerner, H. R., Nakalembe, C., Yeh, B., Zvonkov, I., Skakun, S., Becker-Reshef, I., & McNally, A. (2024). Satellite data shows resilience of Tigrayan farmers in crop cultivation during civil war. Science of Remote Sensing, 100140.