Advances In SDI Development In Africa


ECA, CODI and CODI-Geo

The United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) is the regional arm of the UN Secretariat in Africa with mandate to undertake activities to develop the social and economic sectors in Africa. These activities are divided into programmatic areas, with several legislative and subsidiary organs overseeing and advising on them. The highest legislative body is the Conference of African Ministers responsible for Economic and Social Development and Planning, referred to as the Commission. The subsidiary bodies included the United Nations Regional Cartographic Conference for Africa (UNRCCA). The UNRCCA was established pursuant to a resolution of the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations, which recommends that regional commissions could consider the establishment of cartographic committees if they deem it desirable. It provided a forum for the exchange of experience, transfer of technology and review of the development trends of national cartographic institutions. The majority of elements in the program of work of ECA in the field of cartography and remote sensing emanated from the conferences. Despite the accepted importance of these meetings, attendance was dwindling, and by the fifth session in1983, questions were raised about the future of the meetings, but it was decided to continue, nevertheless.

Similar conferences advised ECA on other programmatic areas and by 1979, there were 32 such legislative and subsidiary bodies. Eventually, a reform process was initiated to re-focus the activities of ECA, avoid duplication and overlap in the legislative bodies, and promote greater efficiency and effectiveness. The revision of the intergovernmental machinery began in 1993 and the renewal process of ECA to serve Africa better started in 1995. These reforms resulted in five programmes, one of which is “harnessing information for development.”

The main objective of the harnessing information sub-programme is to assist African member States in developing information and communication infrastructure plans as key to expediting and enhancing data sharing and electronic connectivity in Africa; and to support member States’ efforts in improving the quality of statistics through technical assistance in areas of collection, processing, analysis and standardization of methods and concepts. The cartographic and other related activities fell under this sub-programme. The associated legislative body for this sub-programme is the Committee on Development Information (CODI), which combined the regional conferences that dealt with cartography, statistics, population issues and information technology.

The activities and issues involved in the production, management and dissemination of development information are very diverse and CODI has grouped them into three discipline areas, with three corresponding sub committees. These are the subcommittees for Information and Communications Technologies, Statistics and Geoinformation (CODI-Geo). CODI-Geo subsumes the activities of the old UNRCCA, but with emphasis on the information society. It therefore treats mapping and related activities data collection and processing activities in the overall information management continuum.

The original terms of reference of CODI include provisions to: • Review and advise on the implementation of the African Information Society Initiative (AISI): An action framework for national information and communication infrastructure with a view to suggesting measures to accelerate its implementation; • … • Identify and suggest techniques for the application of geographic information for natural resource exploitation and management; • … • Advise on the establishment of arrangements for the improvement of all aspects of methodology and practice in the areas of statistics, information science and geographic information system (remote sensing and cartography); and • Coordinate the training for African personnel in the areas of statistics, information science and geographic information systems.

Each sub-committee provided more specific terms of reference for its work, and those for CODI-Geo provided for coordinating activities and developing capacities for national and regional spatial data infrastructures. In 2000, ECA convened an experts’ group meeting to propose the future orientation of geoinformation activities in Africa, in light of the new paradigm of positioning our cartographic activities in the context of the African Information Society Initiative (AISI), being the main initiative through which the sub-programme is being implemented. The group of experts recommended that all activities for the production, processing, management, dissemination and utilisation of geoinformation in Africa should be designed around the SDI concept. This recommendation was endorsed by CODI II in 2001 and became the basis for ECA work on geoinformation.

Specific Activities of ECA

The position paper noted that one of the problems with developing SDIs in Africa was the lack of awareness by decision makers. ECA has therefore been assisting member states in organising awareness and stakeholder workshops. ECA assisted the Survey of Kenya with planning and facilitating the first workshop in 2001. It also assisted with the planning and facilitation of the two Ethiopian workshops. ECA was involved in the review of the NRM/NGIS proposal for Nigeria and supporting the recommendation to reformulate the project and move towards an NSDI, and eventually advised on the programme of the workshop and participated as facilitator. It was also involved in the Botswana workshop.

The position paper noted the importance of metadata and clearinghouse services in implementing SDIs, and the poor level of overall ICT infrastructure in Africa. In response to that, ECA is implementing a clearinghouse system at ECA. The main objectives of the metadata and clearinghouse project are to: • Facilitate the integration of geoinformation into ECA’s policy analysis by providing easy and transparent access to geoinformation tools, techniques and data products; • Facilitate the search and discovery of spatial data collections in and about Africa for use by all decision makers working on issues related to Africa; • Facilitate the dissemination of spatially related knowledge and information products by ECA in appropriate formats.

Specific services for member States are to: • Provide “country spaces” on ECA’s server for countries that do not have the capability to serve their metadata collections. ECA will provide general system maintenance, but the country will own and administer their metadata as a separate database. In cases where it is not possible for the country to log in remotely to update the records in the database, arrangements will be made for updates to be sent to ECA on removable to be applied by ECA. The Ethiopian Natural Resources and Environmental Metadatabase (ENRAEMED) is being maintained as a “country space” on our server. • Provide advice on metadata tools and techniques and assist in organizing training and awareness workshops at regional, sub-regional and national (on request) levels. The first of a series of sub-regional workshops is planned for June 2004 in Yaoundé for countries in the Central African sub-region.

Where is the Permanent Committee?

The 1999 workshop in Pretoria, South Africa, recommended the need for a permanent committee to coordinate SDI activities in Africa, and noted the role of CODI in establishing such a committee. A request was duly made to CODI II in 2001 and a resolution was passed, urging the Secretariat (the Development Information Services Division [DISD] of ECA) to initiate action to establish the permanent committee. In accordance with this resolution, a pre-CODI.3 symposium was convened to adopt the charter for the permanent committee and eventually have it endorsed by CODI.3. The draft charter drawn by the secretariat was adapted from equivalent committees for Latin America, and for Asia and the Pacific.

After reviewing the proposed draft statutes and terms of reference for the committee, it was observed that establishing such a committee would not add any value to the current situation. Moreover, there is no structure for it. It should be recalled that there is no longer a UN Regional Cartographic Conference, since it has been replaced by CODI-Geo – with a new focus. An examination of the terms of reference of CODI-Geo, vis-à-vis the proposed body, found that most of the proposed activities of the body are already included in CODI-Geo’s terms of reference. It was therefore recommended that rather than form yet another body, with additional overheads, the terms of reference of CODI-Geo should be revised and strengthened if need be, to strengthen the SDI coordination and other related activities. The revised TOR for CODI-Geo was approved by CODI.3, including the establishment of an Executive Working Group to provide feedback and oversight in between the biannual CODI meetings.

The SDI Implementation Guide

From the work with member States on raising awareness, and associated advisory services, a need was identified for how-to guide, with best practice lessons. In response to the identified need, an experts’ group meeting was convened to review the status of SDI development in Africa and propose the way forward. During the preparatory consultations for the workshop, it was agreed that it will be more useful to African decision makers, and others involved in all aspects of developing SDIs, and using associated products, will be better served by a targeted guide than a “report”. Other partners working to develop geoinformation and SDI development in Africa indicated interest in collaborating with ECA in producing the guide. The objective of the expert group meeting was therefore re-formulated to emphasise reviewing the first draft of the guide provided by various background/chapter writers. The instruction to the authors and reviewers described the expected output as:

A document, in the form of guidelines on concrete steps to implement SDIs in Africa. The document will be targeted to all those that have a key role to play in promoting, adopting, developing or implementing spatial information infrastructure in their home countries. These include administrators and managers of topographic and resource mapping departments and agencies, legislators and policy-makers, and major users of geo-information products

The partners that participated in producing the document are: • GSDI, who had produced SDI Cookbook and has been supporting projects in Africa; • EIS Africa – has been working on EIS since the 90s; • USGS – has been facilitating SDI projects in Africa; • ITC Netherlands – has long standing experience in capacity building in Africa and has been organising a series of refresher courses for ITC alumni in different parts of Africa; • Regional Centres and organisations involved in geoinformation and SDI issues, especially the Regional Centre for Training in Aerospace Surveys (RECTAS), the Regional Centre for Mapping of Resources for Development (RCMRD) and the African Organisation for Cartography and Remote Sensing; and • Several practitioners at national level in Africa.

It was also agreed that the guide will be a “living document”. The idea of the living document is that SDI concepts are still evolving and by the time a book or printed report is ready, some of the intended contents could develop further. It was therefore decided that the current version of the guide would be continuously maintained on the Internet, with stable snapshots produced on portable media (print or CD-ROM) when the need arises.

The principal authors are:

• Dr. Elizabeth (Liz) Gavin (South Africa), Executive Director, EIS Africa; • André Bassolé (Burkina Faso), Chairman of the Board of Directors, EIS Africa; • Kate Lance (USA), Senior Scientist, U.S. Geological Survey/EROS Data Center and Global Spatial Data Infrastructure Secretariat; • Dr. Yola Georgiadou (the Netherlands), Department of Planning and Geoinformation Management, ITC; • Garfield A. Giff (Jamaica/Canada), PhD Candidate, Department of Geodesy and Geomatics Engineering, University of New Brunswick, Fredericton. The outline of the chapters of the guide is:

  1. Introduction
    • Justification, background and overview
  2. Explaining SDI concepts
    • The need to be able to communicate SDI ideas effectively to people who have not had experience in managing digital geographic information was well understood.
    • Explanations and analogies used in communicating about SDI within various countries
  3. Assessing the status and environment of the geospatial sector in a country
    • The identification of spatial data producers and users, their current practices and future requirements, has constituted the first step in many African countries towards establishing an SDI strategy.
    • Reference material includes several questionnaires used in conducting surveys on current data usage and data needs
  4. Organisational framework
    • The institutional arrangements and organizational frameworks for SDI, which have been adopted by various African countries, are presented in the chapter.
  5. Policy
    • Examples of how various countries have addressed the issues of data custodianship, data discovery and data maintenance in their policies are provided within this chapter
  6. Getting started
    • Guidance on first implementation steps
    • Includes examples of how SDI initiatives began in a variety of African countries, highlighting the first steps taken, early successes and lessons learnt
    • These country examples demonstrate a variety in the factors that triggered SDI development
  7. Funding mechanisms for SDI implementation
    • Research-based funding models for SDI
    • Emphasise that sustainable financing for SDI is vital for long-term SDI development.
    • Several experiences of difficulties with initiating SDI programmes through externally funded projects


Two other chapters – Communicating SDI and Reaching Out to Global and Regional SDI Communities – are still pending.

Conclusion

Spatial data infrastructures are being developed in Africa, with different countries being at different stages. The work of ECA and its partners tries to ensure that all countries have the same understanding of the key SDI context. During the work of ECA in assisting member states with awareness and/or stakeholder workshops, the need for a guide was identified. An SDI implementation guide has been produced, with collaborative input from several partners, while another group of partners reviewed the draft document and produced. Being a “living document” the authentic version will be on the Internet.

References and Notes

Most of the materials in this paper are drawn from SDI Africa: An Implementation Guide, and supporting materials, all available at http://www.uneca.org/disd/geoinfo/SDIAfrica.

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