I was privileged to attend the just concluded State of the map Africa 2021 held online on the 19th – 21th November 2021. I registered for the conference with the objectives of knowing more about the OSM community in Africa, see and learn more about how OSM data is used in Africa, and meet my fellow African mappers. I must say these objectives were achieved and more and I learnt a lot from various sessions in the conference.

I learnt about the OSGeoLive is a self-contained bootable DVD, USB thumb drive or Virtual Machine based on Lubuntu, that allows one to try a wide variety of open source geospatial software without installing anything. It is composed entirely of free software such as QGIS, GeoServer, JOSM, PostGIS, etc, allowing it to be freely distributed, duplicated and passed around in one of the first sessions titled Beyond mapping! Reusing OpenStreetMap Data and FOSS4G by Enock Seth Nyamador.

It was particularly interesting to hear how OSM data is used in Nigeria. One was about how OSM is used in mapping of flood vulnerable Building Footprints in Nigeria in a session titled The Emerging Flood Vulnerable Building footprint in OpenStreetMap Nigeria: Metrics by Victor N. Sunday. It was great to hear how far they have gone, the number of communities mapped (as I am also a contributor). Another was a session titled Community mapping to improve Flood preparedness in Nigeria by Taiwo Ogunwumi and Opeyemi Olatunde which shows how the Geohazard Risk Mapping Initiative (GRMI) which is a group of indigenous volunteers who contributes to the mapping buildings and other critical infrastructure of various flood-prone communities in Nigeria.

I also learnt about the GeOsm which is the first mapping data-based Social network. I learn many other thing from various sessions in the conference. It was really an interesting experience for me.