First of all what a great set up by the state of the map committee.

I must say, before the conference I wasn’t quite aware of all the partners OSM was in collaboration with, it seems like it all goes well beyond just mapping.

Of great interest was the content density of OSM in Africa and the lack of map content that has resulted over the years and that can be particularly attributed to the lack of technological advancements especially for Africa.

Great idea by Isla from the use of offline spaces and technology to sort of overcome the lack of internet connectivity when one seeks such services.

The importance of free and open source software is indeed an important aspect of mapping, from the presentation it’s quite clear why open source software is essential in an effort to overcome some of the already existing challenges that mappers face.

Well I’ve used some of these open source software like QGIS, and ArcMap which was unfortunately not free and open source software. Great innovation from the OSGeolive where users can change the user language making it usable to most mappers irrespective of their language.

Quite an eye opener from the use of AI generated buildings and manual tracing. To share a personal opinion, data quality is key in all these aspects to ensure quality analysis by any user who wishes to use this OSM data

From the presentation on the journey towards building a sustainable OSM community in Malawi, I was particularly concerned about my country of origin (Eswatini formally known as Swaziland) as from browsing on the OSM website, it seems like very few Eswatini mappers contribute to this initiative.

The challenges highlighted in the presentation including disaster and risk management were pointed out on their solutions including population data which can help locate people at risk in cases of such natural disasters such as volcanic eruptions. At last I saw a somehow familiar face, Geoffrey😇

Thumbs up again to all the event organizers. What a great event.