Dakar, March 16 (APS) – The West and North Africa Collaborative Mapping Regional Hub, launched in Dakar on Wednesday, “is working to provide communities, authorities and institutions with clear data to face their problems and help” in decision-making, says its regional director, Ibrahima Cissé.
“We want to be closer to communities, so that data and maps can be tools for analysis and decision-making, which will help improve people’s living conditions,” he explained at the launch. from the hub.
This mapping hub is the result of a collaboration with Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT).
This international NGO is dedicated to humanitarian action and community development through collaborative mapping in OpenStreetMap, in partnership with governments, civil society, private operators, institutions.
“When it comes to floods, roads, access to healthcare, data is important for decision-making. We cannot make good decisions without information regarding the position of roads, health, villages, flooded water points. All these issues are taken into account by the mapping”, he underlined.
According to him, “the West and North Africa collaborative mapping hub will work to have public data that can be used by authorities, institutions”.
He believes that “communities must have access” to this data, which “must stop being in the private domain and be used by everyone”.
According to Mr. Cissé, “the communities must arrive at [les] use to deal with their problems, for decision-making”.
He believes that today it is impossible to “have grassroots development programs without having clear data (…)”.
“Every day, we need data to make a mapping decision, whatever the field, for a decision especially in times of crisis, of disaster”, explains the executive director of Humanitarium Openstreet Man (HOT), Tyler Radford.
He emphasizes that it is “important for everyone to have data
to make decisions that concern and affect our daily lives”.
“For example, in the event of floods, mapping allows us to know where the communities are, their needs and to take care of them”, he argues.
In addition to West and North Africa, HOT has established regional mapping centers in Asia-Pacific, East and Southern Africa, and plans to open a fourth in Latin America and the Caribbean.
According to Radford, “Regional hubs engage with local mapping communities to foster an open global mapping movement, and ensure that missing maps are no longer a cause of human suffering.”
The Mapping Center in West and North Africa is a regional team dedicated to humanitarian action and community development through mapping.
Five projects will be carried out on access to water in Niger, the mapping of health huts in Senegal, sustainable cities with the mapping of the capital in Togo and the establishment of a warning system for disasters in Liberia.