I am a physical planner, working for the Government of Lesotho. I am an experienced GIS user within a very focused context of laying out Land Use and Settlement Plans in the section of Forward Planning. I am very committed to using opensource approaches and this includes OpenStreetMap. My HOTOSM record as a mapper dates back to 2015, and in the 5 years I have grown to understand that HOTOSM is the most important humanitarian platform when it comes to supporting logistical responses to disasters. I have also noticed that, while not fitting into the “crisis mapping” definition other HOTOSM projects have the capability of recording and documenting environmental damage and other larger scale threats caused by climate events, and in particular I was a big contributor to the #MapLesotho mapping tasks supported on the hotosm tasking platform.

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Earlier this year I applied for the scholarship to attend HOTSUMMIT and State of the Map (SOTM) global Conference in Heidelberg, Germany. The application was accepted and I got fully a funded scholarship. It was the first SOTM conference that I was able to attend and I was looking forward to meet other OSM mappers and data users and have a clear picture of the experiences shared.

OSM Foundation Assistance

In preparation for the conference I received an email from Christine Karch asking whether I would be interested in joining and working together with the program’s committee, and of course I accepted. Being part of that team gave me an insight of how preparations for such a huge conference are done, as well as the criteria used on how the choice of proposals submitted is done. That task was a good experience and I was grateful.

I would also like to show my appreciation to Dorothea for here support and guidance from the day I got accepted for scholarship. She was always available through emails and ready to respond to all the questions I had. The process of getting visa was successful first hand because of her help in listing all that’s needed and sending all the documents I would need. She also made my travel to Heidelberg stress-free from flights connections, train and public transport connections.

I also like to thank Christine ones again for believing in me and giving me an opportunity to chair nine sessions at the conference. I was grateful that I was given that chance because in my experience such little opportunities help in building one’s confidence in public speaking.

Conference Presentations

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I am a physical planner, working for the Government of Lesotho. I am an experienced GIS user within a very focused context of laying out sites for human settlements. I am very committed to open things, whether that is opendata and this includes OpenStreetMap, and also opensource approaches to solving the problems of measurement, scale and needs. My HOTOSM record as a mapper dates back to 2015, and in these 4 years I have grown to understand that HOTOSM is the most important humanitarian platform when it comes to supporting logistical responses to disasters. I have also noticed that, while not fitting into the “crisis mapping” definition other HOTOSM projects have the capability of recording and documenting environmental damage and other larger scale threats caused by climate events, and in particular I was a big contributor to the #MapLesotho mapping tasks supported on the hotosm tasking platform.

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Now with the weather cooling off in Lesotho, and armchair mapping becoming more of a necessity than a choice I am thinking of hitting the #MapLesotho mapping with a large number of edits. My node contribution is approaching 5 million and this weather will grant me an opportunity to increase the edits and reach my goal. It is true I map everyday but I haven’t had an intense mapping in a while and I intend to crack my record.

There is a big need of improved mapping in Lesotho in areas such as Leribe and Maseru and using the data we realised that this districts have pockets of unmapped places. I therefore plan to hit the grid and tackle those because the idea is to have the whole country completely and perfectly mapped. Thus making open-source data readily available for use by different offices or individuals.

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My sincerest thanks to each and everyone who voted for me in the two categories, that is Greatness in Mapping Award and Improving the Africa Award. I’m honoured and humbled that you believed in me. From the day I noticed that my name has been nominated I felt encouragement to keep doing what I am doing. I will forever be greatful to the OpenSteetMap Community.

I can’t express how thankful I am that I won the Greatness in Mapping Award. It is an honour to be recognised by such a great community.

I also want to thank Fingal County Council for introducing #MapLesotho because that’s how I first knew about OpenSteetMap and it’s usefulness. I am the one who got this honor but the award belongs at least equally to the great teams that I have had the good fortune to work with at the various stages, more especially my mentor DeBigC who dedicated his time to guide and advice me. I’m extremely grateful!

I have been OSM mapper since February 2015 and got enthusiastic about the change I was making in #MapLesotho. Being the spatial planner I realised the importance of OpenstreetMap data and how it would be useful in my job.

Being number one mapper in Lesotho opened doors for me, and in September 2016 I won a scholarship to study in Ireland doing MSc in Spatial Planning at Dublin Institute of Technology. I adapted easily in Ireland & met Ireland OSM community and also continued training school kids to map, and also how to use different Phone Apps such as mapillary, OSM Tracker, street complete and maps.me.

I wanted to be able to map more than what #MapLesotho taught me, so simaltaneous to moving to Ireland for town planning scholarship and internship I started mapping Ireland. I adapted to different ways of mapping and started mapping things in Ireland that aren’t there in Lesotho such as the coast and heritage sites, different tags for different road uses, such as bicycle lanes, bus lanes, footpath etc. It was also fascinating to map high buildings because they are frequent in Ireland using maps.me and the sudden change when editing height of the buildings using the app was entertaining as well. Streetcomplete is another app that always got me curious because the more I used it the more I got different kinds of stuff to edit which I would say widened my experience with Tags also.

Being in a new country of course I wanted to get out and about, so I turned my curiosity into mapillary trips in all 32 counties and I became number 2 mapillary contributor in Ireland. The truth about me is when I do mapping stuff I make sure I do it well and conquer, hahah😊.

In June I became mapper of the month and that took me by surprise when I was contacted by a person I have never talked to before Marc Gemis because I never thought there are people out there who notice the effort and the changes I was making.

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About me

I have been an OpenStreetMap user on #MapLesotho from 7th February 2015 trained by three beardies, Ciarán Staunton, Dave Corley and Colin Broderick. Thanks to them Lesotho has equipped mappers making a huge difference to their country.

Becoming a maker

Ever since I joined I made it a habit of mapping at least once every week, then got more hooked to an extend that I mapped for an hour everyday. The mapping tool I use is JOSM because it can work offline I only need to be online to upload. In Lesotho internet is not accessible for most of us and so JOSM is an ideal tool. I contributed in most of the tasks in #MapLesotho, and made sure tiles were changing from white to gold then green.

My future with OSM

This year February there was yet another training and I moved to the next level. How do i use the data?. We were divided into three groups and I was in an analysis team with Mpaleng Oliphant, Refiloe Semethe, Seitebatso Mohlahatsa and Tšolo Khoanyane. We were trained on how to use the data we have using QGIS by Colin. Here we create different Scenarios that help us find answers to questions that might arise from different ministries, departments or stakeholders etc.

I might be a user of the data but that also helped me realise what’s missing in mapping and currently working on the quality of the map.