STATE OF THE MAP AFRICA CONFERENCE 2019 IVORY COAST MY EXPERIENCE The revolution of open data in Africa has come at the right time when most of the counties are at the pick of development and data is one of the tools that is helping in decision making and influencing the government and other organizations that use data in their activities. Data is been used in many ways in Africa some of the most prominent areas were data is been is in the area of health environment such as climate change, urban planning, etc.

If Africa has to develop there is a need to make sure that the ordinary people take a keen interest in Making extraordinary things. One of the extraordinary communities of people that are making a change in Africa is the OSM community. The data science in Africa has come at the right time because Africa is rapidly growing which means there must be people to understand what is happing and plan for the future and try by all means to overcome the challenges that are coming with the rapid growth of the African content.

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Hello, my name is Chomba Chishala, I am a student doing Environmental Education at the University of Zambia. At the same time the president of the YouthMappers at the University of Zambia Chapter (YMUNZA) I came to know YouthMappers through Open Street Map Zambia (OSMZAMBIA) in February this year 2017 when OSMZAMBIA had a meeting in Lusaka’s Bongo Hive training center. From that meeting, I learnt how to use different tools when mapping including the importance of the maps and how maps can be used for humanitarian help.

As YouthMappers UNZA, we have been involved in different tasks or activities and some of the prominent tasks that we have been doing include the malaria elimination where we have been mapping buildings / houses to help people who are into spraying for malaria as well as distribution of mosquito net as well as mapping for urban and rural areas in Zambia.

Many communities especially in African countries remain underdeveloped due to geographical impediments such as Hills, Mountains and lack of information with regard to how they are distributed especially their location that act as a hindrance to people willing to help in case of an outbreak of a disease.
Thus mapping buildings, roads, and streams as well as showing their actual location and potentials has derived me to engage myself in mapping as many communities as possible for the betterment of most of the communities. ‘’I am a proud YouthMapper who is willing to make a change, just urging everyone out there to join us and make a difference.’’

“As YouthMappers UNZA, our vision is to cultivate a generation of young people to become leaders in creating resilient communities and empowering them to define their world by mapping it.”