State of OpenStreetMap in Africa 2023

This article presents a comprehensive overview of the OpenStreetMap (OSM) landscape in Africa as outlined by Geoffrey Kateregga during the State of the Map Africa 2023 conference, held both in Yaoundé, Cameroon, and online. Serving as an update to the previous assessment conducted in 2020, the overview stems from a survey organized by OpenStreetMap Africa, a collaborative network of OSM Communities across the continent. The conference provided insights into the current state, challenges, and successes of OSM communities in Africa, encompassing responses from 50 out of the 54 countries, offering a nuanced understanding of the evolving OSM landscape on the continent.

Survey Methodology and Participants:

The survey, conducted by OSM Africa, engaged members from diverse communities, organizations, and individual contributors across the continent. With responses from 50 countries, the survey covered a substantial portion of Africa, there were no responses to the survey from Central African Republic, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Guinea-Bissau, Mauritius, São Tomé and Príncipe, Seychelles.

OpenStreetMap Africa Data Coverage 2023

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I asked ChatGPT to create an OpenStreetMap Community Building Playbook, this is what it came up with

Introduction

OpenStreetMap (OSM) is an open-source project that relies on the contributions of volunteers to create and maintain a free and editable map of the world. To build a strong OSM community, it is important to create a framework that promotes engagement, inclusivity, and collaboration. This playbook outlines key strategies for community building that can help OSM communities thrive.

Define your community’s vision:

The first step to building a strong OSM community is to define your community’s vision. What is your community’s mission? What are your goals and objectives? What values do you want to promote? Clarifying these key elements of your community’s identity will help you attract like-minded individuals and organizations.

Identify your community’s strengths and weaknesses:

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During the COVID-19 outbreak, online conferences became more popular as that was the only way for conferences to happen, State of the Map Africa 2021 happened online as well, which made the conference more accessible to people than before, a record 597 participants joined through Hopin the conference platform which had features that allowed participants to actively engage and interact.

Post COVID-19, there is now interest in organizing hybrid events instead of going back to completely offline conferences, to take advantage of the benefits that come with an online event that makes a conference more accessible. During the State of the Map Tanzania 2023 conference we tried out the hybrid set up, with a view that it would also help us prepare for State of the Map Africa 2023, in Yaounde Cameroon, which is going to be a hybrid event. Below I share lessons learned that may be helpful for other conference organizers in setting up a hybrid event

To set up a hybrid conference, you need at least five basic things

1. A conference platform for online and offline participants to engage and interact. The conference platform should have an option for embedding livestreams from YouTube or directly from a streaming software. The platform should also have chat, Q&A, polls, reply and comment features. Options for speed networking, booths for sponsors, etc. There are hundreds of conference platforms out there, below are some that have been used at State of the Map and related Conferences;

• Venueless - used at State of the Map 2021 and State of the Map 2022
• Hopin - used at the HOT Summit 2021 and State of the Map Africa 2021
• Livefi - used at State of the Map Tanzania 2023
• Airmeet - used at Wiki Indaba 2021

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On September 9-11, 2022, I attended the Wikimedia Summit 2022 in Berlin, Germany as a representative of the Wikimedia Community User Group in Uganda. As someone who belongs to several communities, I was interested in learning from the Wikimedia community lessons that could be replicated by the OpenStreetMap community.

The Wikimedia Summit is the annual conference that brings together Affiliates of the Wikimedia Foundation. The program was designed around the implementation of Wikimedia Foundation’s 2030 Movement Strategy initiatives, and provided a space for connecting, celebrating, learning and planning for the future of the Wikimedia movement.

Photo by Jason Krüger CC BY-SA 4.0, from Wikimedia Commons

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This year, the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT) community received funding from The Audacious Project. Over the next five years, this funding will enable us to scale up its support for local mapping communities with the aim of mapping an area home to one billion people, adding places at high risk of natural disaster or experiencing poverty.

Over five years, HOT plan to:

• Set up a network of regional hubs in South Asia, East Africa, West Africa, and Latin America and the Caribbean, which will engage with local mapping communities, facilitate knowledge exchanges, distribute funding, and provide training and support in order to massively scale local edits to OpenStreetMap in 94 countries
• Invest in technologies that enhance mapping contributions on mobile to enable scaling of local contributions to OpenStreetMap
• Invest in map data quality and ethical collection and use of map data
• Work with humanitarian organizations, governments, and other actors to help them use OpenStreetMap to deliver more effective and efficient aid
• Work more closely with the OSM community/OpenStreetMap Foundation (OSMF), supporting the community and core systems and software

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Ahead of the State of the Map 2020 conference, which was supposed to take in place in Africa for the first time, but was held online due to COVID-19, OSM Africa surveyed OpenStreetMap community leaders in different countries in Africa, to assess the state of OpenStreetMap in their countries. We heard back from 52 out of the 55 countries in Africa and the results were presented at the conference.

OSM Africa is a network of OpenStreetMap communities from all over Africa working together to grow OpenStreetMap on the continent.

The brightest spots on the map below illustrate substantial amounts of OpenStreetMap node density in different places in Africa.

This visualization shows the total number of mapped buildings per year in each country from 2007 to 2020. Which also shows the history and journey of OpenStreetMap editing in Africa.

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State of the Map 2018 reinforced the diversity of the global OpenStreetMap Community and also lit a torch into the future of the OSM. This blogpost highlights my experiences in Milan and my key takeaways from the conference.

From the day I received the news that I was granted a scholarship to attend the conference, to the day I landed in Milan, it was all an awesome experience. The OSMF through Rob and Dorothea, provided wonderful support to make sure we all got our visas approved, and flights and accommodation booked. Visiting a new place can be intimidating, but thanks to the wonderful support everything went smoothly.

For me the fun began in Dubai where I met other scholars and participants Arnalie, Montshy, Iyan, and Eugene on the way to Milan, traveling as a group made it more fun and easier. The train ride from Malpensa Int. Airport to the Milan Central station took about 55 minutes, and then a 15 minutes walk to our hotel welcomed us to Milan.

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How did you become involved in HOT?

I got involved in HOT in March 2015 as a Regional OSM Trainer for the [Tanzania] (https://hotosm.org/projects/tanzania) project with Mr. Jeff Haack. This came after OpenStreetMap work done with [Mapping day Uganda] (http://www.mappingday.com/) organizing mapping events and training university students in different parts of the country on how to map and using the HOT tasking manager to help when disaster occurs elsewhere in the world.

In June 2015 I was lucky to be one of the scholarship winners for [State of the Map US 2015] (http://stateofthemap.us/) in New York. This gave me an opportunity to learn more about how HOT operates through attending HOT meetings at conference and sharing experiences with several people involved in HOT.

Could you tell us about your involvement in HOT, mapping and/or humanitarian response?

I am currently involved in HOT as the Lead Mapping Supervisor working on Community Mapping for Flood Resilience - [Ramani Huria] (http://ramanihuria.org/) in Dar es Salaam Tanzania. My work involves supervising and coordinating all mapping activities. We have trained over 150 university students who are all part of the HOT community in Tanzania now.

In June 2015, I was one of the participants who attended the HOT Activation Curriculum workshop in Dar es Salaam. At the workshop I was able to meet with other 13 HOT people from different parts of Africa where we were able to share experiences on what HOT means to everyone and what we would like to see happen in the future especially for Africa.

What does HOT mean to you?

For me HOT is one of the big inspirations for people to map. It is human nature to offer help to anyone who is affected by disaster, mapping and organising mapathons is the only way through which some of us can give the much needed help. But also being part of HOT gives very many OpenStreetMappers a sense of belonging to something special that is being done for the map that we all love.

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Training youth at http://mweva.com/ a youth ICT training center how to map with the team from www.mappingday.com