Tag: mapping
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My First Solo Cartography Project
Discovering Friendship, Resilience, and Beauty in Kenya’s Taita Hills In 2010, I did my first solo cartography project in Africa. Before coming to Kenya in 2009, I had already established a connection with Ronald Mdawida, the director of Kosmos Solutions International, an NGO working in both the Taita Hills and Nairobi’s informal settlements. Since I…
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Exploring the Uncharted
A Take on Mapping Back in July 2010, one of my first mapping projects in Kenya took me to Mount Elgon. It was a task for the National Democratic Institute, focusing on mapping polling stations for election monitoring before the constitutional referendum held on August 4, 2010. Drawing from this experience and incorporating recent experience,…
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Land Tenure Issues in Taita Hills
As a part of our research into applying ICTs to the data capture element of land registration, we conducted a series of interviews in Taita Hills touching on major issues people face when it comes to land tenure. The interviews were done in Wongonyi, Ghazi, and Kishushe village, and other locations throughout Taita Taveta County.…
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The Need for Inclusive Community- and Data-centered Land Registration Within Standards and Legal Thresholds
In countries across Africa, many people do not have access to formal land registration. Individual and shared property rights have not been properly documented or acknowledged. Lack of documentary evidence of customary property rights leaves individuals, households, and communities at a disadvantage. Lack of customary land rights has undermined the ability of individuals, households, and…
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Survey of 6000+ plots in Viwandani (Photo Blog)
In the past six weeks, Spatial Collective’s team visited approximately 6000 plots in Viwandani Area in Nairobi and completed thousands of interviews touching on access to sanitation facilities. To complete a project this size in such a short time, project planning and good teamwork are essential. Images below represent one of our fieldwork planning meetings…
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Creating landlord and plot profiles of Viwandani Area
Spatial Collective is currently conducting a door-to-door survey for the purpose of collecting data on sanitation facilities and creating landlord and plot profiles in one of Nairobi’s informal settlements. We are providing the manpower to conduct the survey and have also trained additional people from the settlement to help with the work. To fulfill the…
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Digitizing Zanzibar Archipelago (Progress Report)
Spatial Collective spent months on Zanzibar building capacity of the Commission for Lands (COLA) and State University of Zanzibar (SUZA) students and staff on digitizing the Digitizing the Outputs of the Zanzibar Mapping Initiative. The goal was to build enough capacity so that local entities can independently digitize all the structures on Unguja (and eventually…
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Digitizing Viwandani
In collaboration with Sanergy, Spatial Collective digitized Viwandani area of Mukuru in Nairobi. Using aerial imagery provided by Ramani Geosystems Ltd., we produced a building footprint of every structure, which will later be used for identification of plots and developing plot profiles. Each structure is an outline of a building’s roof as seen from the…
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Digitizing North East Unguja Island and Stone Town on Zanzibar
Between August 8th and September 5th, Spatial Collective held a series of workshops at the Commission for Lands (COLA) on Zanzibar. The aims of the workshops were to train and supervise the digitization of the UAV imagery in order to create a series of detailed spatial data layers while at the same time build capacity of…
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Digitizing the Outputs of the Zanzibar Mapping Initiative (Photo Blog)
Spatial Collective was hired to help the Revolutionary Government of Zanzibar and the participating local entities to collect and verify geospatial data by utilizing rectified Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) imagery provided by the Zanzibar Mapping Initiative. The Zanzibar Mapping Initiative is a collaboration of Commission of Science and Technology, Commission for Lands and the World…