OpenStreetMap
I’m raising funds to purchase the historic 1:50,000 topographic map series of Eswatini (formerly Swaziland), so I can preserve and share them online as a seamless, zoomable mosaic - free for everyone.
In 2008 I successfully raised £1000 to acquire the equivalent series for Namibia (South West Africa). You can explore that project here: https://namibia-topo.openstreetmap.org.za/
Donate and more information: https://www.gofundme.com/f/purchase-historical-eswatini-topographic-maps
Discussion
Comment from imagico on 31 October 2025 at 12:10
Are these going to be (and did you get for Namibia) full map sheet scans?
This might not seem overly relevant for OSM use but for the value of such data as a record of cartographic history the information on the map sheet rims (like data sources used, specification of map sheet edition etc.) is of immense value.
Comment from Firefishy on 31 October 2025 at 12:51
For Namibia I only have a few as full sheet scans. The copyright of the original sheets is ambiguous as they were published by the South African government prior to Namibian independence. The South African national mapping agency are more than happy with us using their South African sheets and they are listed on osm.org/copyright . I’ve contacted the Namibian national agency before, but never had a reply.
For Eswatini all are full sheet scans. For Zimbabwe ~60% of the sheets I have already, the majority are full sheet scans. All sheets I have the year they were published. I am paying a professional GIS person to help crop and georectify the sheets to allow creating a seamless mosaic.
Eswatini copyright on artistic works is 50 years, many of the sheets are already out of copyright and would be a suitable source for OpenStreetMap. I will reach our to the national mapping agency of Eswatini. I intend to copy all sheets to archive.org
Comment from Firefishy on 31 October 2025 at 13:29
Correction: Not all the Eswatini sheets I have are full sheet scans. Many have already been cropped.
Comment from CharliePlett on 31 October 2025 at 14:24
Huh, I finally learn what DOS stands for. This is the same type of map I’ve used to map all of Belize on OpenStreetMap and OpenHistoricalMap. https://mapwarper.net/maps/87567
Comment from ramseraph1 on 9 November 2025 at 16:19
Just wanted to let you know that I wrote a tool to automatically georeference and crop topo maps at https://github.com/ramSeraph/topo_map_processor
It is a bit clunky to use where you have to fiddle with the various parameters but it has got the job done before. It uses image processing to locate the corners of the map and along with an index file containing sheet number to the corner coordinates, georefences and crops the toposheet and emits a Cloud Optimised Geotiff.
This has been used to automatically georeference and clip Survey Of India’s and some other topo map series from the subcontinent.
Hope that helps.