Hi, Ayodele:
I am very glad to read your email. Being the most populous country in
Africa, and with such a big number of graduates in all subjects
(including geospatial), I was kind of frustrated that there wasn't still
a strong OSM community in Nigeria. But this email of yours points in the
right direction, and surely it will lead, sooner or later, to have such
community to be self-organized.
Generally speaking, OSM local chapters organize, at least, around a wiki
page and a talk mailing list.
eHealth Africa is doing an awesome job in North Nigeria, and as part of
their projects, they are providing huge amounts of data, some collected
in the field and imported into OSM and some other data being directly
mapped into OSM, like road network. But, of course, one NGO is not meant
to lead a volunteer community for such a big country as Nigeria. There
have to be different members of the Nigerian society, with different
goals and interests, who have to lead that effort, and decide
collectively and autonomously what they think is the best for the
Nigerian map, keeping in mind that we are at the same time a global
community, with the goal of a worldwide and consistent geodatabase.
During the 2 months I spent in Kano last year, I opened the talk-ng
mailing list [1] and started to re-arrange the Nigerian Wikiproject wiki
page [2], that needs still lot of work. Up to now, most of the
subscribers of the talk-ng are eHealth Africa staff, so I would
recommend you to subscribe to the list and use it as the main hub for
Nigerian OSM community discussion.
I also opened a Facebook page [3] (the most active), a Google+ page [4]
and a Twitter account [5] (these last two with almost no activity), that
can help spreading the word around Nigeria and beyond. Needless to say,
the idea is that a Nigerian OSM local community takes control of these
accounts when ready and willing.
About eHealth Africa, I obviously will let their staff to tell you on
ways to collaborate each other. At this moment, HOT is coordinating a
mapping effort for the complex NE Nigeria crisis, with road mapping and
two eHealth Africa-collected settlements and health facilities imports,
at the moment for Borno state (many other data have already been
imported in the past for the 10th Northernmost states of Nigeria), and a
still to be finished job for Gambaru city, also in Borno state [6].
OSM coverage in Nigeria is still far from good.
About roads, and if we start with the North, Kano state road network is
great, although nothing will ever be perfect. Borno state road network
is improving fast, and Bauchi state have been mapped extensively. Some
road mapping has been done in Kaduna too. Except for Borno, those roads
have been mapped by eHealth Africa staff. The other states need
extensive road mapping. Road mapping for Central and South Nigeria is
also poor or very poor, and the lack of high resolution aerial imagery
for a big percentage of Central and South Nigeria (specially in the
South) doesn't help improving the situation (North Nigeria has most of
it covered with high res imagery) [7].
Started by user crackers250 and followed by me, the mapping of trunk and
federal roads is still unfinished for Nigeria. All that work is based on
a early 70's law that is probably outdated. You can follow-up this task
progress in this wiki page: [9].
For road coverage, we could use the Groads dataset [10], and even set up
some HOT Tasking Manager jobs to fill in the missing roads according to
that data set, as we are doing already for Mali [11] and Central African
Republic [12].
About other data, all states and LGA's boundaries are already mapped in
OSM, plus all the wards in 10 North states of Nigeria (data kindly
provided by eHealth Africa). Thousands of residential areas and hundreds
of health facilities from the eHealth Africa database have been imported
into OSM too. You can consult all imports for Nigeria here: [8]. Some
cities are quite well mapped in OSM, like Kano and Benin City to name
two, but most of the cities need even the base data to be finished.
And there is only one way to achieve these goals: by growing local
communities. So that's why I am so happy to read that your main goal is
to open people up to growing together the Nigerian map.
Please share your questions and thoughts here and in the talk-ng list,
as there are people with lots of experience in all fields of OSM that
will be happy to assist.
Cheers, and have a nice day,
Rafael Ávila Coya (edvac).
[1] https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-ng
[2] http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/WikiProject_Nigeria
[3] https://www.facebook.com/openstreetmapnigeria
[4] https://plus.google.com/111950932706827998068/posts
[5] https://twitter.com/openstreetmapng
[6]
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/WikiProject_Nigeria/HOT_Activation_projects
[7]
http://umap.fluv.io/en/map/north-and-central-nigeria-bing-hires-imagery-cover_1580#6/10.369/7.471
[8] http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Nigeria_Imports
