OpenStreetMap in Africa: A quick overview of the rise of OSM communities on the Africa continent
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Nyamador, Enock Seth
This presentation provides a brief overview on the rise of OpenStreetMap communities and activities on the Africa continent.
 Good morning and welcome to my presentation on OpenStreetMap in Africa. Let's just give you a quick overview and insight into OpenStreetMap on the continent. My name is Inok. I am an open source, free, live, open data enthusiast. You can find me on Twitter and that is my email if you need to get in touch. So yeah, this demonstration is going to be about OpenStreetMap, all about OpenStreetMap, OpenStreetMap. We'll look at force4g as well. We'll also talk about data, what has been done, what is there. We'll also look at needs once and then the issues and how we can address them or how we have tried to solve some of these issues or how they have been solved. And then we'll look at the state of the map Africa of course, the community is human. Notwithstanding the corona year last year, we still be meeting physically of course, so state of the map Africa just like state of the map global. So quickly we'll look at what is OpenStreetMap. There is the possibility that you are watching this talk about OpenStreetMap and have an idea about OpenStreetMap already, but just quickly the definition on the homepage of OpenStreetMap is pretty much self-explanatory and interesting that OpenStreetMap is a map of the world created by people like you and I and then it's free to use under open license. So because OpenStreetMap is free to be used under open license and it's a global community, it gives everyone a global playing field for us to be able to work together, notwithstanding the barriers, we are able to still communicate and participate and also whatever could be done with this product in Europe, in America, could also be done in Africa, maybe Ghana, in Togo, in Benin, it could still be done just like how free and open source software gives you the possibility, the freedom to run, share and then modify and then do whatever you want to do to the software. So last year my colleague Joffrey made an interesting presentation about OpenStreetMap in the state of OpenStreetMap in Africa during the online state of the map global which was scheduled to be in, to schedule to happen in Cape Town, South Africa, but unfortunately due to the situation which we all know it didn't happen. So quickly Joffrey's presentation spoke about the community and then using the indicator of number of buildings per country across the continent to rank them. So this animation presentation basically uses the years and then the amount of buildings mapped in this country to do a quick demonstration or analysis on what has been done. Also this presentation is from research which collected information, it's a survey from participants of people across the continent who are leaders or actors in various communities such as OSM, Benin, OpenStreetMap, Côte d'Ivoire and so on and so forth. So from the, we will talk about OpenStreet Africa later, from the presentation it highlighted staffs like the definition of membership, the communication channels, we could see on the slide at the communication channel used mostly by communities across the continent is of course the Facebook family, Telegram catching up, OSM forum and then the mailing list even though it's available per country depending on the, it's less used. That tells you about less email culture or mailing list culture. So organizations or these communities are informally structured and then it's not compared to how you have OSM structures in Europe or across, but this is varying, it's varying depending on where we are. So also there are some issues in communities but quickly we could just talk about successes. You could see there have been a lot of successes and counting. There is from public transport mapping of informal transit called paratransit to from disease mapping, Ebola, community map patterns and then communities transitioning from being loosely organized, enthusiasts to becoming a legal entity that is not for profit in respective countries and communities or countries where there is none or there were no communities or any activities of locals doing open street map has changed or there is also an active community or kind of couple of people contributing or doing something related to open street map. This slide talks about challenges and then challenges of course, challenges lack of tools, basic needs from mobile phone to laptops, internet of course, internet is one issue of, we might have if you have traveled to but we are catching up if Africa has missed the copper age now that fiber optics is the future and then a couple of fiber optic supplies keeps popping up and increasing the capital. For example in Accra there is fiber to the home so maybe hopefully we missing the copper age is a frog leap to the fiber optic age which is the future I was discussing with a friend recently and then this was what we took home from one another. Challenges continue, we have administrative challenges of course gender imbalance is a global issue and there is low open source culture but in going forward I will show this how this is increasing and we are trying to improve this as well. So we can also look at the lack of volunteer culture so that quickly brings me to the Maslows hierarchy of needs because when we are talking about individual needs in maybe other parts of the world for example in Europe, in America where the living conditions of citizens seems to be much more better you don't think or you don't care about basic needs according to Maslows triangle you focus on the psychological needs you think about friendship going forward into volunteering and following your interests passion but realize there is insufficiency I mean let me not say insufficiency there is not the motivation because there is nothing in it for you because you need the basic need you need money so if you tend to find out about open street map what first question get access, am I going to be paid for it or be enumerated for doing this so you can see people coming into felt volunteering when we run projects or activities as projects even though volunteers are required volunteers needs to be paid because these basic needs are not readily available. Also yeah Geofrease suggested solutions to some of these challenges you can take a look at Geofrease presentation it's on ccc media.ccc.de okay so we jump on to data so when we look at geofabric extract and we look at Africa Africa as today is 4.2 GB good compared to others maybe yeah and that looks quite good encouraging but let's go down let's look at country wise you could see from Geofrease presentation here some factors has led to the boost or increase of data for let's say two years ago when you check this Ghana was actually where is Ghana quickly find Ghana Ghana was maybe less than 20 but now is 55 that tells you there is an increase something is happening you could see Tanzania and Uganda and so on and so forth so quickly we can look at the OSM start let's see contributions per population and we zoom in you could see the contributors 9 I think as of 10th you can just go to maybe 9th January and see what happened well in Ghana I had 11 togo 7 and then 12 we go to East Africa Tanzania which has had a great success from the the Ramani Hurya project which way back in 20 I think 20 this is 2014 yeah 2014 has built the resilience academy which was a partnership with Hort and the World Bank has proven to be a success and created a strong and lasting community partnership with government using force tools of course QGS and and so on and so forth good so we can now move to local chapters no no let's talk about support so due to issues with basic needs that we are required to you know that to function to really need internet to contribute to open streets map even though you could still do stuff offline with Osmand and other couple of tools but you still need internet for the first step penetration people require basic IT or computing skills which is not readily on the table because not everyone is even though you can use a smartphone there are certain stuff that people can do out of the box maybe using a basic word processor to type set the document might be a difficult thing but you know how to use a phone to use a smart application chart application to send a message so last year from the osmf micro grants program you could see two countries from Africa we have Nairobi Kenya I will tell you more about Nairobi Kenya and there is Uganda these are interesting cities for us in relation to community growth you can see and then this is openly available on osmwiki you can take a look at and the project is about details are here and so on and etc and then also Kenya Nairobi as well I think I open this twice can close this so for growth of communities we all know of all might have heard of the useful very important project one of the earliest ones map Kibera project that talks about mapping the slam in Kenya Kibera project that support resources and then information readily available to authorities and now moving to action also the 2014 Ebola response from HOT the Mediterranean Open Street map team and other mapping activities has contributed to of course the increase in this number of data we can also now jump to yeah HOT micro grant from I think 2020 or 2019 has also contributed to some of these and also the where is this the open cities Africa project I think I think I'll do open cities yeah the open cities project which has taken place in a couple of countries across the continent from Abigant to Zanzibar in Tanzania has also improved and then with the search communities as also work with communities to create important and live data which is accessible to government and citizens through the World Bank support and its partners so jumping to local chapter so in the beginning I think I mentioned that not all chapter so the community seems to be well formally structured and then you know the requirements to become a local chapter affiliated to the OSMF OSMF Foundation so last year we had as they say Republic Democratic of Congo becoming the first chapter official OSM chapter in the continent on the African continent so yeah we moving from somewhere to somewhere as well now I will jump to community there is state of the map global which we all attend and the state of the map Africa which state of the map organization of African communities was from a conversation I think some years back 2014 where a couple of us just random thoughts met in Tanzania and decided to okay and then this became a reality so from 2019 we had state of the map in Côte d'Ivoire that is Gran Basam and Abigant of course in Africa you know we love football a lot and football is very unified global game changer we all love football across the globe we all love football from the English Premier League to Bundesliga and so on La Liga and Coen we follow and we love them so from the first edition of state of the map Africa which was in Kampala in 2017 yeah in 2017 the last day saw a football game and then in 2019 when we were in Abigant also we had a football game so this a couple of photos from this from 2014 and then 2017 excuse me and then the recent one from 2019 where we were lucky to have of course Steve Coste founder of WSM present who attended this event which was in partnership it was jointly held with understanding risk of the World Bank and then Open Street Map Côte d'Ivoire and the OSMF Open Street Map Africa community we also had support from couple of partners and then grateful to OSMF and others for supporting us and giving us some level of support some level of support during this organization so this is from 2019 we had 19 participants which was we had a map at one during the event and this 26,000 to 3000 changes of course we threw money raised from sponsors and donations we were able to offer 19 travel grants with accommodation travel that is for if it's by road or by flight and then some stipend to 19 from West East and Southern Africa and we had 37 nationalities and it was a pretty interesting venue for this and then these were the partners and sponsors we had and then we supported by this OSMF, OSM France and then OSU of course and OMA in Kavdo so next year not to jump okay so we in Open Street Map communities across the continent also there is the usage of free and open source software especially in software coming from OSU, OSU Live is an interesting project that we try to use for our webshops and then because it's a liners distribution based on Ubuntu and contains of course JoSM and a couple of other tools that we use so QGI's which is Dominance Carta Cross we use it a lot I use QGI's personal everyday and then QGI's is used for the Ramani Huria project you can see QGI's were used to produce a map in Open Cities project you can see most all maps from Accra where I was involved in the project were produced with QGI's so we love QGI's we love Open Source and we love Phosphor G as well and the how do you call it reception the growth is kind of increasing gradually so in 2021 which is this year State of the map Africa will be in Kenya Nairobi and then okay there's an issue here it's supposed to be 2021 so that will be fixed so it's 2021 Kenya Nairobi we are looking at having of course more than this participants and currently we are looking for partners sponsors and donations whatever means to and then participants so if you want to help in any way just get in touch with the team and then we will get back to you and see how possible you could support participate and of course when we talk about Africa people not from Africa the first perception or what comes into the mind of course for a child cartography map I saw recently the demonstration of Africa was with animals of course so not to say that people from Africa are animals I'm from Africa I'm an African my national cities African Africa is not a country and so this epic picture that was used for the bid for state of the map Africa 2021 was a giraffe so yeah we invite you to state of the map Africa 2021 in Kenya Nairobi to have fun meet the community learn and share and then also get to know what we have to what we're doing connect opportunities and so on and so forth and just to end the presentation we like to show this video which you can check out from the address is on YouTube from DFDR from the last year's state of the map Africa we heard in this showcasing changes across Open Street map in Africa there's some selected cities some of them might have been just put this to two and then I'll mutate and then some of them mostly cities where they have been enormous you could see a distance and here probably know is South Africa Johannesburg forgive me and then we're into West Africa yeah West Africa has been really we say West Africa is seen a lot of growth because West Africa's active communities from across Nigeria to Ghana, Côte d'Ivoire, Bokina, communities seems to be growing faster and faster and then it's going to grow in North West Africa starting our issues and challenges so yeah the next time you are traveling to an African country brace yourself to meet the community and I invite you especially to state of the map Africa 2020 in Kenya Nairobi thank you very much and I leave you with this yeah go back to the last slide I live with this let the force be with you and thanks for watching bye
 Good morning and welcome to my presentation on OpenStreetMap in Africa.  Let's just give you a quick overview and insight into OpenStreetMap on the continent.  My name is Inok.  I am an open source, free, live, open data enthusiast.  You can find me on Twitter and that is my email if you need to get in touch.  So yeah, this demonstration is going to be about OpenStreetMap, all about OpenStreetMap,  OpenStreetMap.  We'll look at force4g as well.  We'll also talk about data, what has been done, what is there.  We'll also look at needs once and then the issues and how we can address them or how  we have tried to solve some of these issues or how they have been solved.  And then we'll look at the state of the map Africa of course, the community is human.  Notwithstanding the corona year last year, we still be meeting physically of course,  so state of the map Africa just like state of the map global.  So quickly we'll look at what is OpenStreetMap.  There is the possibility that you are watching this talk about OpenStreetMap and have an  idea about OpenStreetMap already, but just quickly the definition on the homepage of  OpenStreetMap is pretty much self-explanatory and interesting that OpenStreetMap is a map  of the world created by people like you and I and then it's free to use under open license.  So because OpenStreetMap is free to be used under open license and it's a global community,  it gives everyone a global playing field for us to be able to work together, notwithstanding  the barriers, we are able to still communicate and participate and also whatever could be  done with this product in Europe, in America, could also be done in Africa, maybe Ghana,  in Togo, in Benin, it could still be done just like how free and open source software  gives you the possibility, the freedom to run, share and then modify and then do whatever  you want to do to the software.  So last year my colleague Joffrey made an interesting presentation about OpenStreetMap  in the state of OpenStreetMap in Africa during the online state of the map global which was  scheduled to be in, to schedule to happen in Cape Town, South Africa, but unfortunately  due to the situation which we all know it didn't happen.  So quickly Joffrey's presentation spoke about the community and then using the indicator  of number of buildings per country across the continent to rank them.  So this animation presentation basically uses the years and then the amount of buildings  mapped in this country to do a quick demonstration or analysis on what has been done.  Also this presentation is from research which collected information, it's a survey from  participants of people across the continent who are leaders or actors in various communities  such as OSM, Benin, OpenStreetMap, Côte d'Ivoire and so on and so forth.  So from the, we will talk about OpenStreet Africa later, from the presentation it highlighted  staffs like the definition of membership, the communication channels, we could see on  the slide at the communication channel used mostly by communities across the continent  is of course the Facebook family, Telegram catching up, OSM forum and then the mailing  list even though it's available per country depending on the, it's less used.  That tells you about less email culture or mailing list culture.  So organizations or these communities are informally structured and then it's not compared  to how you have OSM structures in Europe or across, but this is varying, it's varying  depending on where we are.  So also there are some issues in communities but quickly we could just talk about successes.  You could see there have been a lot of successes and counting.  There is from public transport mapping of informal transit called paratransit to from  disease mapping, Ebola, community map patterns and then communities transitioning from being  loosely organized, enthusiasts to becoming a legal entity that is not for profit in respective  countries and communities or countries where there is none or there were no communities  or any activities of locals doing open street map has changed or there is also an active  community or kind of couple of people contributing or doing something related to open street  map.  This slide talks about challenges and then challenges of course, challenges lack of tools,  basic needs from mobile phone to laptops, internet of course, internet is one issue  of, we might have if you have traveled to but we are catching up if Africa has missed  the copper age now that fiber optics is the future and then a couple of fiber optic supplies  keeps popping up and increasing the capital.  For example in Accra there is fiber to the home so maybe hopefully we missing the copper  age is a frog leap to the fiber optic age which is the future I was discussing with  a friend recently and then this was what we took home from one another.  Challenges continue, we have administrative challenges of course gender imbalance is a  global issue and there is low open source culture but in going forward I will show  this how this is increasing and we are trying to improve this as well.  So we can also look at the lack of volunteer culture so that quickly brings me to the Maslows  hierarchy of needs because when we are talking about individual needs in maybe other parts  of the world for example in Europe, in America where the living conditions of citizens seems  to be much more better you don't think or you don't care about basic needs according  to Maslows triangle you focus on the psychological needs you think about friendship going forward  into volunteering and following your interests passion but realize there is insufficiency  I mean let me not say insufficiency there is not the motivation because there is nothing  in it for you because you need the basic need you need money so if you tend to find out  about open street map what first question get access, am I going to be paid for it or  be enumerated for doing this so you can see people coming into felt volunteering when  we run projects or activities as projects even though volunteers are required volunteers  needs to be paid because these basic needs are not readily available.  Also yeah Geofrease suggested solutions to some of these challenges you can take a look  at Geofrease presentation it's on ccc media.ccc.de okay so we jump on to data so when we look  at geofabric extract and we look at Africa Africa as today is 4.2 GB good compared to  others maybe yeah and that looks quite good encouraging but let's go down let's look  at country wise you could see from Geofrease presentation here some factors has led to  the boost or increase of data for let's say two years ago when you check this Ghana was  actually where is Ghana quickly find Ghana Ghana was maybe less than 20 but now is 55  that tells you there is an increase something is happening you could see Tanzania and Uganda  and so on and so forth so quickly we can look at the OSM start let's see contributions  per population and we zoom in you could see the contributors 9 I think as of 10th you  can just go to maybe 9th January and see what happened well in Ghana I had 11 togo 7 and  then 12 we go to East Africa Tanzania which has had a great success from the the Ramani  Hurya project which way back in 20 I think 20 this is 2014 yeah 2014 has built the resilience  academy which was a partnership with Hort and the World Bank has proven to be a success  and created a strong and lasting community partnership with government using force tools  of course QGS and and so on and so forth good so we can now move to local chapters no no  let's talk about support so due to issues with basic needs that we are required to you  know that to function to really need internet to contribute to open streets map even though  you could still do stuff offline with Osmand and other couple of tools but you still need  internet for the first step penetration people require basic IT or computing skills which  is not readily on the table because not everyone is even though you can use a smartphone there  are certain stuff that people can do out of the box maybe using a basic word processor  to type set the document might be a difficult thing but you know how to use a phone to use  a smart application chart application to send a message so last year from the osmf micro  grants program you could see two countries from Africa we have Nairobi Kenya I will tell  you more about Nairobi Kenya and there is Uganda these are interesting cities for us  in relation to community growth you can see and then this is openly available on osmwiki  you can take a look at and the project is about details are here and so on and etc and  then also Kenya Nairobi as well I think I open this twice can close this so for growth  of communities we all know of all might have heard of the useful very important project  one of the earliest ones map Kibera project that talks about mapping the slam in Kenya  Kibera project that support resources and then information readily available to authorities  and now moving to action also the 2014 Ebola response from HOT the Mediterranean Open  Street map team and other mapping activities has contributed to of course the increase  in this number of data we can also now jump to yeah HOT micro grant from I think 2020  or 2019 has also contributed to some of these and also the where is this the open cities  Africa project I think I think I'll do open cities yeah the open cities project which  has taken place in a couple of countries across the continent from Abigant to Zanzibar in  Tanzania has also improved and then with the search communities as also work with communities  to create important and live data which is accessible to government and citizens through  the World Bank support and its partners so jumping to local chapter so in the beginning  I think I mentioned that not all chapter so the community seems to be well formally structured  and then you know the requirements to become a local chapter affiliated to the OSMF OSMF  Foundation so last year we had as they say Republic Democratic of Congo becoming the  first chapter official OSM chapter in the continent on the African continent so yeah  we moving from somewhere to somewhere as well now I will jump to community there is state  of the map global which we all attend and the state of the map Africa which state of  the map organization of African communities was from a conversation I think some years  back 2014 where a couple of us just random thoughts met in Tanzania and decided to okay  and then this became a reality so from 2019 we had state of the map in Côte d'Ivoire  that is Gran Basam and Abigant of course in Africa you know we love football a lot and  football is very unified global game changer we all love football across the globe we all  love football from the English Premier League to Bundesliga and so on La Liga and Coen we  follow and we love them so from the first edition of state of the map Africa which  was in Kampala in 2017 yeah in 2017 the last day saw a football game and then in 2019 when  we were in Abigant also we had a football game so this a couple of photos from this  from 2014 and then 2017 excuse me and then the recent one from 2019 where we were lucky  to have of course Steve Coste founder of WSM present who attended this event which was  in partnership it was jointly held with understanding risk of the World Bank and then Open Street  Map Côte d'Ivoire and the OSMF Open Street Map Africa community we also had support from  couple of partners and then grateful to OSMF and others for supporting us and giving us  some level of support some level of support during this organization so this is from 2019  we had 19 participants which was we had a map at one during the event and this 26,000  to 3000 changes of course we threw money raised from sponsors and donations we were able  to offer 19 travel grants with accommodation travel that is for if it's by road or by  flight and then some stipend to 19 from West East and Southern Africa and we had 37 nationalities  and it was a pretty interesting venue for this and then these were the partners and  sponsors we had and then we supported by this OSMF, OSM France and then OSU of course  and OMA in Kavdo so next year not to jump okay so we in Open Street Map communities  across the continent also there is the usage of free and open source software especially  in software coming from OSU, OSU Live is an interesting project that we try to use for  our webshops and then because it's a liners distribution based on Ubuntu and contains  of course JoSM and a couple of other tools that we use so QGI's which is Dominance Carta  Cross we use it a lot I use QGI's personal everyday and then QGI's is used for the Ramani  Huria project you can see QGI's were used to produce a map in Open Cities project you  can see most all maps from Accra where I was involved in the project were produced with  QGI's so we love QGI's we love Open Source and we love Phosphor G as well and the how  do you call it reception the growth is kind of increasing gradually so in 2021 which is  this year State of the map Africa will be in Kenya Nairobi and then okay there's an issue  here it's supposed to be 2021 so that will be fixed so it's 2021 Kenya Nairobi we are  looking at having of course more than this participants and currently we are looking  for partners sponsors and donations whatever means to and then participants so if you want  to help in any way just get in touch with the team and then we will get back to you  and see how possible you could support participate and of course when we talk about Africa people  not from Africa the first perception or what comes into the mind of course for a child  cartography map I saw recently the demonstration of Africa was with animals of course so not  to say that people from Africa are animals I'm from Africa I'm an African my national  cities African Africa is not a country and so this epic picture that was used for the  bid for state of the map Africa 2021 was a giraffe so yeah we invite you to state of  the map Africa 2021 in Kenya Nairobi to have fun meet the community learn and share and  then also get to know what we have to what we're doing connect opportunities and so on  and so forth and just to end the presentation we like to show this video which you can check  out from the address is on YouTube from DFDR from the last year's state of the map Africa  we heard in this showcasing changes across Open Street map in Africa there's some selected  cities some of them might have been just put this to two and then I'll mutate and then  some of them mostly cities where they have been enormous you could see a distance and  here probably know is South Africa Johannesburg forgive me and then we're into West Africa  yeah West Africa has been really we say West Africa is seen a lot of growth because West  Africa's active communities from across Nigeria to Ghana, Côte d'Ivoire, Bokina, communities  seems to be growing faster and faster and then it's going to grow in North West Africa  starting our issues and challenges so yeah the next time you are traveling to an African  country brace yourself to meet the community and I invite you especially to state of the  map Africa 2020 in Kenya Nairobi thank you very much and I leave you with this yeah go  back to the last slide I live with this let the force be with you and thanks for watching  bye
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