The West African coastal population and ecosystems are increasingly exposed to a multitude of hazards. These are likely to be exacerbated by global climate change and direct impacts from local human activities. Our ability to understand coastal changes has been limited by an incomplete understanding of the processes and the difficulty of obtaining detailed data. Recent advances in satellite techniques have made it possible to obtain rich coastal data sets that provide a solid foundation for improving climate change adaptation strategies for humanity and increasing the resilience of ecosystems for sustainable development. In this article, we review West African coastal layout and current socio-environmental challenges together with key parameters that can be monitored and several coastal management programs that rely on satellite techniques to monitor indicators at the regional level. The social, technical and scientific problems and difficulties that hinder the interest of coastal practitioners and decision-makers to use the satellite data are identified. We provide a roadmap to precisely respond to these difficulties and on how an improved satellite earth observation strategy can better support future coastal zone management in West Africa.

西非沿海人口和生态系统越来越多地面临多种危害。全球气候变化和当地人类活动的直接影响可能会加剧这些情况。由于对过程的不完整理解和难以获得详细数据，我们了解沿海变化的能力受到限制。卫星技术的最新进展使得获得丰富的沿海数据集成为可能，这些数据集为改进人类气候变化适应战略和提高生态系统的可持续发展复原力奠定了坚实的基础。在本文中，我们回顾了西非沿海布局和当前的社会环境挑战，以及可以监测的关键参数以及依赖卫星技术监测区域层面指标的几个沿海管理计划。确定了阻碍沿海从业者和决策者使用卫星数据的兴趣的社会、技术和科学问题和困难。我们提供了一个路线图，以准确应对这些困难，以及改进的卫星地球观测战略如何更好地支持西非未来的沿海地区管理。