Open Cities Africa, Zanzibar

Spatial Collective is the implementing partner of the World Bank’s Open Cities Africa initiative on Zanzibar. The goal of the initiative is to create and release open spatial data about the built environment, critical infrastructure, and natural hazards concerning the Zanzibar Archipelago, with a specific focus on Zanzibar City.

This project builds on our previous efforts of mapping the outputs of the Zanzibar Mapping Initiative (read more about it here and here). Since the start of the Open Cities Project, our team of digitizers added more than 100,000 buildings to an already existing dataset of approximately 250,000 buildings mapped during the first phase.

The mapping of buildings on Unguja Island is almost complete. Our efforts are now shifting towards mapping all of the buildings on Pemba Island and adding additional infrastructure such as the road network on both islands.

Below is the map representing the number of buildings per each 3x3km grid.