Microgrants/Microgrants 2020/Proposal/Mapping Uganda's New Cities/Report
Microgrant Final Report
Status and Report Type
type = Final | status = Submitted
Methods and Activities
The methods and activities that were used to execute our New Cities project were based on the primary purpose of the project which was to grow the number of OpenStreetMap contributors in Uganda. These methods included the following:
- Internship Trainings
- Community Mapathons
- Individual mappers Call
- Building Partnerships
Internship Trainings: New Cities project was characterised by a series of internship cohorts for trainees from Uganda and the entire world. Participants were trained in a number of mapping techniques and also other life skills. Internship training topics can be found in the master document here
Community Mapathons: Also as one way of growing the community and contributions, a number of mapathons were organized to host both the trainees and trainers to come together and contribute to OpenStreetMap, Share experiences, and make connections.
Individual mappers call: The project tasks attracted a number of both new and old local community members to contribute to the updating and mapping of these new cities. Some of the contributors were from other parts of the world as the tasks were promoted on social media.
Building Partnerships: During the course of the project, we have managed to build some partnerships with a number of cities and the Ministry. We have the Memorandum of Understanding with Lira City and we are still reaching out to other cities to make sure the partnerships are strengthened. Open Mapping Campaigns: As part of enhancing the details on OpenStreetMap, we have been running Maps.Me campaigns in some of the cities and this has resulted in seeing more of the POIs being mapped.
Outcome
The OSM community has gained new memberships of over 200 from the internship program and over 26 from mapathons events and social media postings. We have been able to improve our partnership with the city administration by signing a Memorandum of Understanding with these cities. We have mapped over 15 cities and municipalities in Uganda. Including Mbarara City, Arua City Gulu City, Jinja City, Fort Portal City, Mbale City, Masaka City, Hoima City, Entebbe City, Lira City, Moroto City, Nakasongola City, Soroti City, Kabale City, Wakiso City and, Namayumba Town Council.
The first cohort of the Mapping Uganda's New Cities project attracted 54 interns and 10 trainers for the internship while the second cohort of the Mapping Uganda's New Cities project attracted a total of 71 interns. Of these, 16 interns in the second cohort came from the Institute of Survey and Land Management (ISLM). This is part of a collaboration between between OpenStreetMap Uganda and the Institute of Survey and Land Management which has come about as part of this project. As part of this collaboration, OpenStreetMap Uganda is working with ISLM to incorporate OpenStreetMap, open-source Geographical Information Systems, and drone technology in the training programs and practical skill sets and methodologies offered at the institute. This will support the institute in effectively providing skills to the students at ISLM the encompass the most recent developments and technologies in the the GIS and mapping sector.
During the internship, the learners were among other things taught how to contribute to OpenStreetMap using various available tools (such as iD editor, JOSM, HOT Tasking Manager) for both mapping and validating tasks. The details of the topics covered were as follows:
Topics covered during internship training
- Introduction to OpenStreetMap
- OpenStreetMap Editing tools
- Introduction to GIS
- Introduction to QGIS
- OpenStreetMap Data Mining (QuickOSM, overpass-turbo)
- Introduction to Drone Technology and its applications
Detail Report
| Target outcome | Achieved outcome | Explanation |
|---|---|---|
| Remote mapping 15 newly elevated cities | 15 new cities and 1 town completely mapped | Remote mapping has been completed however, 4 cities were mapped under HOT Uganda Building Importation projects and community efforts. These four cities are scheduled for validation during this project. Two other cities are still being mapped. Some of the cities mapped include; Mbarara City Masaka City Jinja City Mbale City Entebbe City Moroto City among others |
| To identify, recruit, train and work with at least 10 mappers based in each of the 15 cities | Internship trainees spread across the whole country and beyond | The project was executed basing on internship training, mapathons and individual mapping campaigns. This created a number of mappers in different cities across the country and also OSM contributors were trained from other countries like Nigeria, Tanzania and South Africa |
| Designing hardcopy maps for the city administrators | Maps have been generated and are being dispatched to the respective cities. | Validation of the data is still ongoing by a team of validators from the OpenStreetMap Uganda Community |
| Growing the OSM Uganda Community | 200 new contributors | The internship program has resulted into over 200 new OSM contributors in Uganda |
| Partnerships | Memorandum of Understandings with Cities | We have been able to improve our partnership with the city administration by signing Memorandum of Understanding with these cities. We have mapped over 15 cities and municipalities in uganda. Including Mbarara City, Arua City Gulu City, Jinja City, Fort Portal City, Mbale City, Masaka City, Hoima City, Entebbe City, Lira City, Moroto City, Nakasongola City, Soroti City, Kabale City, Wakiso City and, Namayumba Town Council |
Learning
What worked well?
- OpenStreetMap Uganda team noticed that training the community mappers remotely was a general success. This was mainly because members from across the country were able to attend. The COVID restrictions made transport to towns more expensive therefore resorting to remote training was a good idea.
- OSM Uganda has increased the number of community mappers in the country and is now devising more ways to retain and encourage these mappers to continue adding more local data to OpenStreetMap beyond the project period.
- Some of the cities like Arua, Kabale, Moroto, Hoima were mapped through HOT’s building importation so the team is now focusing on the completion of Gulu and Wakiso city.
What did not work so well?
- Maintaining the numbers of internship members. Being an online session that attracted people from different countries and different professions, the numbers were unstable to the end of the program.
- In the execution of this project, OSM Uganda had a challenge of imagery offsets and misaligning of imagery. This was mainly so around the hilly areas of cities like Entebbe and Wakiso. The OSM Uganda team provided more training to community mappers and validators on how to correctly align imagery.
- The team underestimated the time required to map all cities as Wakiso city has grown tremendously denser and the boundaries of the city have also been extended.
What would you do differently next time?
- OSM Uganda team would like to spend more time training and supporting new mappers to build their knowledge in contributing to OSM, such as working with imagery alignment.
- Use another tool such as zoom instead of google meet for some of its remote training and mapathons. Google meet was at times hacked by online trolls and people with low bandwidth also struggled to have a clear connection.
Grant funds used
OSM Uganda has spent 100% of the total grant funds, these funds were mainly used for data stipend towards mapping volunteers and validators during events like mapathons and mapping campaigns. The funds also have been used to produce and print the maps, facilitate the lead teams with data, and transport stipend and also running open mapping campaigns using Maps.Me. Attached here is the link to the Receipts Folder.
Unused funds
As of today, OSM Uganda has used about UGX 21,000,000 which is approximately EUR 5,000 and all the funds have been spent as proposed.
Anything else?
As part of fulfilling our sustainability pledge, we are still continuing with mapping New Cities Project and training communities in various open source tools and as of now, we have already interviewed around 45 of the 100 applicants that applied.