ILICIT Africa – Geospatial Wing organized a Geo4Africa Codesprint which kicked off on the 14th of July 2017 attracting up to 69 delegates. With support from Outbox Technology Hub being the venue sponsor, OSGeo Foundation and WhereIsMyTransport being the main sponsors gave a boost in building the skills and knowledge on development of the geospatial solutions with open source tools including mapserver, QGIS. Uganda Bureau of statistic availed datasets upon request which helped the codesprint participants play with data in line with the theme that was aligned with the summit “Geo Tools Innovating Knowledge Databases”
The Codesprint was supported by 6 mentors and 3 Judges. The judges included Jonathan Wabwire (Geo-Information Communications), Charles Wanume (Digital Natives), Marsh Reddy (WhereIsMyTransport) and Wanjiru (ILICIT Africa). The judges were from Uganda, South Africa and Kenya respectively which showcased regional engagement and yearn for knowledge in Open Source Geospatial technologies.
Data remains a challenge in Africa and there is a need to centralise the data that is gathered every day with from the different stakeholders and organisations. Quoting Daniel K. Nanghaka the Executive Director – ILICIT Africa, “… inadequate open data limits development, GIS plays a key role in decision making processes including monitoring and evaluation, if the data is not opened up and Geo coded then we are limiting our own development in Africa …” which portrayed a need for ogranisation and companies to give access to open data.
Jonathan Wabwire – GIC urged to support and mentor the development of Geospatial solutions that came out of the Codesprint. 11 teams geared 48 hours towards building Geospatial solutions based on Open Source Technologies. WhereIsMyTransport Developer expert – Marsh Reddy spend time with the developers building solutions around the WhereIsMyTransport API. Tools used during development included use of MapServer while other solutions were built using the QGIS.
Special thanks goes to the Sponsors OSGeo Foundation, WhereIsMyTransport and Outbox and Uganda Bureau of Statistics for the support that was granted during the codesprint.
