State of the Map Africa 2021

OpenStreetMap Libya, a Community Building Roadmap
11-21, 14:20–14:40 (UTC), Room 2
Language: English

OpenStreetMap is a fairly young and rapidly growing community, in both numbers and awareness, the community is motivated and passionate about mapping, truly diverse and innovative.
being a driven and competitive community, OpenStreetMap Libya have mapped most of Libya, and captured thousands of kilometres of street level imagery, making it to top ten contributors.
in this talk we tell the story of how the OpenStreetMap Libya community formed, the motivations, the contributions, the challenges, and the road ahead.


OpenStreetMap Libya team was born and developed during hard times in the country, and absolutely unsafe and truly unbearable, yet every individual in the community striving for building a better future, got on mapping, and roamed the streets to collect and update the street level imagery, namely KartaView.
About OSM Libya teams,
- The OpenStreetMap Libya project aims to form, document and protect the digital identity of Libyan territory, and build spatial databases in accordance with standard technical specifications and international standards by building modern base maps on digital geographic platforms, to support GIS and setting the legal framework regulating the work of open data platforms under the supervision of the sovereign authorities in the country concerned with national mapping projects, In preparation for comprehensive digital transformation for smarter cities, better quality of life and sustainable development across the country
- OpenStreetCam (KartaView team)
This group aims to capture and maintain the street level imagery database for Libyan cities on the open street camera platform

OpenStreetMap Libya have mapped most of Libya, and captured thousands of kilometres of street level imagery, making it to top ten contributors.
The diversity in the community and the relationships created within, made the work more than just putting Libya on the map, but a way to make the change needed, cultural move changing our prospective.
this talk is a brief about the journey of the community, the role of women in the geospatial realm and especially in the OSM Libya team, presenting the community achievements, discussing its nature and how to make it more effective and beneficial.