iSDAsoil
iSDAsoil is the soil data platform developed by iSDA (International Soil and World Isric Data Centre for Africa) as part of the Africa Soil Information Service program, providing machine learning-derived soil property maps at 30-meter resolution across the entirety of sub-Saharan Africa. As the most spatially detailed and comprehensive open soil dataset available for Africa, iSDAsoil is foundational infrastructure for precision agriculture, agronomic advisory services, and agricultural research across Nigerian and African agricultural landscapes.
The soil mapping methodology behind iSDAsoil combines thousands of soil profile observations collected across sub-Saharan Africa with spatially explicit environmental co-variables — terrain attributes derived from digital elevation models, climate data, vegetation index time series, parent material maps, and land cover classifications — to train random forest machine learning models that predict soil properties at unsampled locations. These models are applied at 30-meter grid resolution across the entire sub-Saharan Africa domain, generating continuous prediction surfaces for each soil property.
The dataset covers 17 key soil properties at two depth intervals: 0-20cm representing the topsoil layer most critical for seedbed preparation, early-stage nutrient uptake, and soil organic matter dynamics; and 20-50cm representing the subsoil layer relevant to deep-rooted crop water and nutrient access. Having properties at both depths allows differentiated analysis of topsoil versus subsoil conditions that affect management recommendations differently.
Soil pH is among the most impactful iSDAsoil variables for Nigerian agriculture. Large areas of Nigerian farmland, particularly in the humid forest zones of southern Nigeria and the derived savanna of the middle belt, have inherently acidic soils due to geological parent materials and centuries of leaching. Low pH limits phosphorus availability, inhibits microbial activity, and reduces the effectiveness of nitrogen fertilizers. iSDAsoil's pH data for Nigerian agricultural areas helps agritech advisory platforms identify fields where lime application is needed before fertilizer programs will achieve full effectiveness.
Soil organic carbon (SOC) from iSDAsoil provides a spatial picture of soil health and natural fertility across Nigerian farmlands. SOC is a critical indicator of soil biological activity, water retention capacity, structural stability, and natural nitrogen supply. Nigerian soils under long-term continuous cultivation without organic matter replacement — which describes a large share of Nigeria's smallholder farmland — have depleted SOC reserves that limit both yield potential and resilience to drought stress. SOC data helps identify areas where soil health restoration through composting, cover cropping, or agroforestry would have the greatest impact.
Available phosphorus from iSDAsoil is particularly actionable for Nigerian fertilizer recommendation systems. Phosphorus is one of the most commonly deficient nutrients in Nigerian soils, and phosphorus deficiency is a major yield-limiting factor for legumes, cassava, and cereals across many zones. Knowing the initial available phosphorus level at a specific farm location allows fertilizer advisories to prescribe appropriate phosphorus application rates — neither underapplying (leaving yield on the table) nor overapplying (wasting inputs and risking environmental runoff).
The REST API interface provides straightforward programmatic access to iSDAsoil data: submit a latitude-longitude pair and receive JSON responses containing soil property values with uncertainty estimates for the queried location. This simple query pattern requires minimal development effort to integrate into Nigerian agritech apps — any application that can make an HTTP request can query iSDAsoil soil properties for any farm location in Nigeria and use those values to drive soil-specific recommendations.
For policy applications, iSDAsoil data enables national-scale soil condition mapping for Nigeria that informs agricultural development investment priorities, fertilizer subsidy allocation, land use planning, and food security projections based on underlying soil resource quality across different Nigerian states and agroecological zones.