My name is Choolwe Hamama, i am an OSM enthusiast based in Zambia. I had the opportunity of attending the 2021 OSM Africa state of the map Conference. This conference provided me with the opportunity to learn about various Open Street Map projects that have been implemented across Africa, as well as to gain new knowledge about Open Street Mapping technologies and to meet and connect with other mappers from across the continent.

The workshops were divided in sessions which helped me better understand various concepts and use of OSM in Africa ranging from different categories such as uses in Local Governments, schools, use of JOSM to Map, use in the Health sector as well as how to contribute to OSM using JOSM.

The meeting went off without a hitch and was a huge success. However, some sessions were a bit long for a virtual conference considering some challenges that we face in Africa, such as load shading and Internet connectivity issues. As result of some of the technical challenges that I faced in my country, I was unable to attend all the sessions of the conference. Furthermore, the technical team has taken a bit long to upload all the recorded session on the YouTube channel, this has made it impossible for people who did not attend the conference because of reasons beyond their control to learn from the conference. It would be preferable for future virtual conferences to look into ways to shorten online meetings as well as to directly record sessions and promptly upload them on YouTube so that participants can review them even after the conference has ended.