Adeyemi Omolola Olaide
Adeyemi Omolola is an aspiring geospatial data analyst and a final-year student of the Department of Geography, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Osun State, Nigeria. She has interests in agriculture, GIS, data, remote sensing, sustainability and content writing
She is the current President of YouthmappersOAU. Under her tenure, she has led the association to the semi-finals of the Africa Map Cup competition 2026, hosted numerous training programs and led a campus audit project where inclusivity and safety for People Living with Disabilities were the key.
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Technical training cannot build a sustainable local chapter; one must change the culture of their community. This is why, as President of YouthMappers OAU chapter, I prioritised shifting our chapter culture from Learn > Implement, to Learn-and-Implement. During my time in YouthMappers, I found that chapters need one thing to stick: PURPOSE. Members need to feel like they’re helping solve problems in their local communities.
Our purpose came in the form of an accessibility project. Members leveraged mapathon data to quantify access to public buildings within Ife Central.
To me, PURPOSEFUL Mapping is the future of successful West African chapters. PURPOSEFUL Mapping puts geospatial work at the centre of students’ minds rather than on the sidelines. When students know they will be building maps for projects that matter to them, they’ll be eager to learn! They won’t see your chapter as another club where you participate once a semester to compete for prizes. Instead, your chapter will become the students’ centre of professional development. And with KoboCollect, Mapillary, and JOSM, our technical stack, your chapter will be sustainable.