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A review of the status of Spatial Data Infrastructure Implementation in Africa
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| 14 October 2008 |
 Introduction
Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDI) are a key component for the development of a Nation. There is a lot of economic potential that is locked away in Spatial Data holdings and this potential is realised by making the data widely available through an SDI (UNECA, 2001). Although SDI’s are being implemented In Africa, they are done using a different name in some instances (Lance, 2003). In April 2005, 83 countries had established National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI) Clearinghouses on the internet (Crompvoets et al, 2007) while the situation in Africa was quite different. In 2003 there were two African countries that had established NSDI clearinghouses (Crompvoets et al, 2003) and five years later there are only three.
Review and methodology
Since the late 1970’s, many National Survey and Mapping organisations begun to recognize the need to justify the large public investments they had received by improving access to and encouraging wider use of the spatial information in their custody (Groot, 1997). The framework that was desired to achieve this is similar to what we call SDI today. NSDIs are mainly established by government bodies and resourced by public funds hence the need to assess their progress (Grus et al, 2007).
SDI have similar characteristics to Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS) in that they are open systems in which different elements interact dynamically to exchange information and where the system as a whole has emergent properties that cannot be understood by reference to the component parts (Marian et al, 2003). Some of the SDI assessments that have been done using the multiview approach include: - Assessing an SDI Readiness Index (Delgado et al, 2005)
- World Status of NSDI Clearinghouses (Crompvoets et al, 2003)
- INSPIRE State of play: Generic approach to assess the status of NSDIs (Vandenbroucke & Jansse, 2008)
For this study, a multi-view SDI assessment framework was adopted. Four viewpoints were established and these are Organisational, Funding, Legal and Technical. A set of 14 more specific indicators were formulated. Although the questionnaire was sent out to 47 countries a comprehensive view of SDI activities could only be concluded for 29. Figure 1 presents a map showing the spatial distribution of the countries polled.
Results
Twenty out of the 29 countries at least have a body that is coordinating the attempts to come up with a formal SDI. There is generally minimal political support for NSDI initiatives. However Rwanda and Uganda are among the countries that have a very high level of political support directly from the President’s office. For Rwanda this has been a major milestone and they have managed to get adequate funding for their NSDI initiative. Only three other countries have expressed adequacy of funding for their NSDI initiative (Gabon, Swaziland and Nigeria).
The participation of stakeholders in NSDI initiatives is generally not satisfactory. Only six out of the 29 countries expressed satisfaction in the participation of different stakeholders in the NSDI initiatives. Many NSDI’s act as clearinghouses while some some NGO initiatives have created clearinghouses and geo-portals which are mainly for project-specific datasets.
Recommendations
Although it would be easier to establish a NSDI after attaining full political support for the initiative, getting political attention has proven to be a task that is beyond the immediate reach for most NSDI agencies all over Africa. A bottom up approach is recommended where the SDI initiative will gain political support after the benefits are communicated in a tangible way.
Open Source Software for GIS is important, because it will cushion most African countries where there is minimal funding in support for SDI initiatives. Open source software products offer a viable and attractive alternative to the commercial solutions for GIS systems (Paluszynski et al, 2007). | |
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