State of the Map Africa 2021

Mills mapping across the country
11-21, 16:40–17:00 (UTC), Room 1
Language: English

Data availability plays a great role in informing decisions in most sectors. In Tanzania, there has been a huge data gap especially in open data to support decisions and make a visible analysis of the situation and to what extent different geographical locations are affected differently by such problems. Mapping mills across the country will help actors understand the specific locations, distribution and capacity of each mill in the country and in turn help to analyze food situations in terms of storage and security within places moved by Sustainable Development Goal “Zero hunger” and “Good health and well-being.


Conducting a national-wide mills survey needs a rigorous approach and implementation strategies that will ensure the project sustainability but also create an accurate database that can easily be updated. OMDTZ will use a community mapping approach to carry out activities in the field i.e
Engaging local community members and agricultural officers during data collection. Local knowledge from community members will not only ensure timely data collection in specific locations but also create a sense of data ownership and develop a sustainable relationship.
Use of open source tools/software to collect data; to train, carry out a successful field campaign and leave sustainable data and mapping methodology with the local community. Open-source software will be used so that the engaged communities can replicate the knowledge to update the database. The idea behind this is to develop an environment to create a network of mapping volunteers and champions. The tools include OpenDataKit Collect (ODK) for data collection, JavaOpenStreetMap Editor (JOSM) for data cleaning and upload to OSM, Quantum GIS (QGIS) for processing the data, etc.
Education to agricultural and extension officers on how the mapping is conducted and maps are produced can inform decision-making in food security and influence policies. This will ensure the incorporation of maps and data as needed tools to plan and make decisions to visit and provide professional advice to farmers and ensure appropriate knowledge and sustainable production and storage.

Community Mapping supervisor, Open data consultant and Project Supervisor, Best trainer award on the Open Data Day community mapping training March 2018 in collaboration with the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team and Tanzania Development Trust training covered open data, OpenStreetMap, ID editor, Maps.me, Field Papers, Kobo Collect, OpenDataKit, OpenMapKit, JOSM, and QGIS.

I participated in different projects countrywide level and outside the country, Projects Like Tanzania Rural electrification (Tanzania Minigrid), REA Phase III as well as Zambia off-grid, Lusaka Facilities, and Sanitation Programme as GIS and Open Data Expert.