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September 2003 |
Roadmap to SDI in Africa
Approach to developing the SDI guide
Input from Africa experts who had been involved in SDI initiatives within their countries was requested. It is within countries that the building of SDI is likely to impact most on the availability of spatial information for decision-making regarding development. It is also at country level that the development of most other infrastructures, must be coordinated, even in a strongly federal context.
Despite limited funding for the project, the approach was to try to obtain contributions from as many experts as possible, in order to produce the best. Thus potential contributors were appealed to "to be inspired by the potential contribution this can make to Africa's development, to make available your time to collect source documents and share your insights and experience which may prove useful to others in Africa also concerned with ensuring that decision-making in Africa is supported by ready access to reliable, current spatial information."
Contributors would be required to provide guidelines and recommendations on the building of various components, such as policies, the identification and building of core or base datasets, standards, metadata development and capturing, developing human resources and technical capacity. Contributors were requested specifically to identify initial concrete steps to take in SDI development, taking into account practical conditions and constraints encountered in countries in Africa. They were also to provide ideas on funding mechanisms and sustain support from all necessary stakeholders and advise on partnership arrangements. Source documents for inclusion in the on-line library would also be requested, such as policy statements, relevant legislation, Memoranda of Understanding between data providers and users.
The Guide development process
Information came in during the second half of 2002, more slowly than planned, as did clarifications to questions asked by the team compiling the information received. Nevertheless, it was possible to provide drafts of six chapters of the guide for review by a "meeting of experts", held in February 2003.
Experts resident in 13 countries in Africa participated in the review meeting convened in Addis Ababa. The composition of the group reflected not only a geographical spread, but also diverse sectors. There were representatives of public sector mapping and environmental agencies, as well as Ministry of Finance, Planning and Economic Development, the private sector, and the academia. These African experts were complemented by international experts, with knowledge and experience of SDI programmes. The review meeting participants worked in small groups, reviewing all the draft chapters, providing digital versions, which included their comments, additional material and suggested changes. The chapter compilers thus left the workshop with three new versions of their draft chapters.
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