Mozambique/Import Mozambique Education Facilities
Goals
The goal is to import 17,657 education facilities of Mozambique
Schedule
- Preparation, discussion: December 2025
- Community Consultation: 15 - 31 December 2025
- Import Execution: January 2026
Data
Data description
The original dataset consists of 17,657 education facilities nodes, in geojson format.
Current number of schools in OSM in Mozambique - 904
- College - 48
- Kindergarten - 49
- Primary & Secondary - 727
- University - 80
Background
Data source site: https://maps.giga.global/map
Type of license: CC-BY-SA 4.0
OSM attribution: GIGA
ODbL Compliance verified: yes
Permission status: A permission letter has been secured and is documented here.
Import Type
The import will be done manually through JOSM, the data will be split by district, and the import for each district will be handlled by different mapper. For each district, we will first check the education facilities nodes to be imported, and second we will assess the data already in the OSM database against the Mozambique Schools data, for the merging into the OSM database. The OSM mappers who will contribute to this import project will follow a detailed workflow to accomplish this.
Note: Each facility node is a very good source of place=* data. Many of the places where these facilities are located aren't yet in OSM, so we can use that information to produce place nodes. But that info will better be incorporated in a different and independent import project.
Data Preparation
Data Reduction & Simplification
The data is originally in csv format. You can download the original data from here.
Tagging Plans
Each education facility node will have the following tags:
| Giga Schools key | OSM tag | Comments | Link |
|---|---|---|---|
| Source | source=Giga | Source of the information | Key:source |
| SchoolID | ref:mined | Official government school ID | |
| Escola | name | Official name of the school | https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:name |
| latitude | latitude | Not uploaded to OSM | |
| longitude | longitude | Not uploaded to OSM | |
EP / ES1 / ES2
|
isced:level= 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 | Education level of the school | https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:isced:level |
| Distrito | addr:district | District name | https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:addr:district |
| Provincia | addr:province | Province name | https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:addr:province |
| TemElectricidade | yes/no | yes/no | https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:electricity |
| TemInternet | internet_access | yes/no | |
| amenity | amenity=school, kindergarten, university, college | New tag added | https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:amenity%3Dschool |
Changeset Tags
We will use the following changeset tags:
- #MozambiqueSchoolImport
To the comment=* tag, you may need to add particular comments to the changeset.
Data Transformation
Data will be in geojsom format. It will be opened in JOSM with the OpenData plugin, and then processed the osm file and convert it to a new osm file with a script. The script will put in lowercase the texts that are all uppercase (except first letter of each word), and add tags according to the tagging schema. It will also convert strings like for example 'Esc.' to 'Escola' or 'EPC' to 'Escola Primária Completa.
Data Merge Workflow
Team Approach
Import will be undertaken by experienced OSM mappers, using an import specific OSM user account, following a workflow using JOSM and the Todolist Plugin.
References
The import will be discussed first in the OSM Mozambique community channels, and then in the OSM Community Forum.
Workflow
You can see the workflow here.
Reverse plan
In case of any trouble, JOSM reverter will be used.
Conflation
The location of the education facilities nodes is generally never more than 150-200 m of the real location, but following the already mentioned workflow, we will place the nodes in the exact position. In case we can't be sure about the location (quite rare), we will leave them in the original position and add a fixme=Please, check the position of the node tag to the node. For school points that exist in un inhabitted areas, and very far away from any settlements, these will not be imported.
If other education facilities are encountered, they will be compared with the Mozambique Schools dataset as well as the Giga schools dataset and merged, keeping all info that the old nodes have. In case of doubt, a fixme tag will be placed and a more specific comment will be added in the changeset comment for more followup if needed.