[TZGISUG] Fwd: [New post] Geoinformation Policy in East Africa (paper review)

Sat Oct 18 12:13:22 EAT 2014

This is an old article slightly rewritten. Might be of interest to some 
of you :-)

Cheers!

Ragnvald

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: 	[New post] Geoinformation Policy in East Africa (paper review)
Date: 	Fri, 17 Oct 2014 22:16:24 +0000
From: 	Away is always somewhere... <donotreply at wordpress.com>
To: 	ragnvald at mindland.com

WordPress.com
ragnvald posted: "For many of us Spatial Data Infrastructures represent 
the roads we are using in our work. What is the current standing on 
Spatial data Infrastructure in East Africa? Mr William Kalande and Mr. 
Ondulo Joe-Duncan in 2006 presented a paper with the title "Ge"

    New post on *Away is always somewhere...*

<http://www.mindland.com/wp/?author=2> 	

    Geoinformation Policy in East Africa (paper review)
    <http://www.mindland.com/wp/geoinformation-policy-east-africa-paper-review/>

by ragnvald <http://www.mindland.com/wp/?author=2>

paper_review_general 
<http://www.mindland.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/paper_review_general.png>For 
many of us Spatial Data Infrastructures represent the roads we are using 
in our work. What is the current standing on Spatial data Infrastructure 
in East Africa? Mr William Kalande and Mr. Ondulo Joe-Duncan in 2006 
presented a paper with the title "Geoinformation Policy in East Africa" 
<https://www.fig.net/pub/fig2006/papers/ts62/ts62_04_kalande_ondulo_0270.pdf> 
at the XXIII FIG Congress held in Munich, Germany in October 8-13 2006. 
In this article they give us a walk trough of the issues regarding 
geoinformation and policy/legislation in Uganda, Tanzania and Kenya. The 
paper is well worth reading. This web-article presents some highlights 
from the paper for your convenience.

In the summary of their article Kalande and Ondulo have this to say:

/Triggered by global trends, economic and political reasons, the 
republics of Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda signed the East African 
Cooperation treaty in 1999 thus bringing the East African Community into 
being. This has led to considerable increase in demand for cross border 
Geoinformation (GI) exchange in the regional block./

/Infrastructure (Railway and road network, airports and coastal ports), 
Natural resources (Lake Victoria, tourists sites), telecommunication 
(common mobile providers and subscribers), Institutions (hospitals, 
banks, schools and colleges) just to mention a few, are now legally and 
commonly shared by the citizens of the 3 member states./

/Coping with this increased demand for cross border geoinformation amid 
the numerous challenges in the effective generation, management and use 
of GI in decision making in the region dictates that GI policies for the 
candidate member countries be harmonized to agreed standards before 
integration. Questions then arise; do these countries on individual 
basis have Geoinformation policy in place? Where not in existence, what 
efforts are being made and at what level? Are there any efforts in 
coming up with a regional policy? The paper highlights the current 
status of GI policy in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, the efforts and 
possibilities in coming up with a regional GI policy./

The following table provides an overview of the central findings in the 
paper.

kalande_2006 
<http://www.mindland.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/kalande_2006.png>

Table from Kalande & Undolu (2006) showing central findings.

According to Kalande & Ondulo the story on an SDI in Tanzania is that 
the Tanzania National Spatial Data Infrastructure steering committee at 
time of publishing the article did not have enough funding to do their 
work. In the meantime several initiatives are on the rise. Some 
governmental and some funded by NGO's. The only mention of biodiversity 
data in the paper is of Wildlife Conservation Society Tanzania having 
an: "[..] enormous amount of data [..]". It should here be mentioned 
that both individuals/groups of researchers and bodies like TAWIRI, 
TAFORI etc... have a lot of data available. Some of it published through 
reports and papers, some of it available upon request. But at this point 
the authors might have fallen prey off the issues they are pointing 
towards - namely inadequate national resources with regards to Spatial 
Data Infrastructure. How would one be able to find resources for SDI if 
it were not for TZGISUG <http://www.tzgisug.org> mailing list, contacts 
and other seemingly random resources?

The article points towards harmonization of the regulations of SDI in 
the East African Countries.

All in all the article does a good job in enlightening us on the SDI 
issues in East Africa. This article is a must-read if you are interested 
in SDI in Tanzania.

Read more of the article by dowloading the article in PDF format from 
the http://www.fig.net:

  * Kalande. W and Ondulo J. D. 2006. Geoinformation Policy in East
    Africa. XXIII FIG Congress. Munich, Germany.
    <https://www.fig.net/pub/fig2006/papers/ts62/ts62_04_kalande_ondulo_0270.pdf>

Almost ten years down the line we are not much wiser. The many 
fragmented initiatives remain so - fragmented and insufficient in their 
structures and extent. I am hoping to see things move forward - at least 
within the management of environmental information. As this is written I 
am about to travel to Tanzania to contribute to a workshop arranged 
together with NEMC where the theme will be how the different 
stakeholders can agree on data sharing.

(This paper review was published in the TZGISUG website some years ago. 
Since then the website has changed profile and I found it more relevant 
to pull this article back to my own website. Some changes has been made 
since its first publication.)

*ragnvald <http://www.mindland.com/wp/?author=2>* | October 17, 2014 at 
11:16 pm | Tags: geoinformation 
<http://www.mindland.com/wp/?taxonomy=post_tag&term=geoinformation>, gis 
<http://www.mindland.com/wp/?taxonomy=post_tag&term=gis>, kenya 
<http://www.mindland.com/wp/?taxonomy=post_tag&term=kenya>, nsdi 
<http://www.mindland.com/wp/?taxonomy=post_tag&term=nsdi>, spatial data 
<http://www.mindland.com/wp/?taxonomy=post_tag&term=spatial-data>, 
tanzania <http://www.mindland.com/wp/?taxonomy=post_tag&term=tanzania>, 
uganda <http://www.mindland.com/wp/?taxonomy=post_tag&term=uganda> | 
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