Web mapping taking off in Africa

In Africa, convergence has been happening between the web and geo as open source solutions such as MapServer, traditional GIS data has been made accessible to millions of people through the web. These innovative tools have inspired the proprietary GIS companies as well. So indeed, geo and web have really taken off, according to Mark de Blois, Founder of Upande.com (a geo consulting firm in Kenya). “Crowd sourcing of data either through online tracing of satellite imagery, field collection with handheld GPS units, GPS enabled handsets or even simple mobile phones is really taking off. This will increasingly mean that official sources of data will be bypassed if they are not made available in a quick, easy and cheap format. This will put pressure on these entities to open up and engage if they don’t want to be sidelined by many users. And that is a great thing which will ultimately benefit many end users,” continued Mark.

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