A conference scheduled to take place in Nairobi Kenya from 6 to 8 september 2011, will gather most of the key players in the geospatial industry as the event take place in the most developped East African nation which has recently put in public domain all geospatial maps , statistics and related information on a web map portal accessible from the whole parts of the world , one would project a succesfull implimenttion of the outcome from the scientific papers and geospatial industry representatives which will highlight how the geospatial technologies are changing the way business is done in East Africa ,Following initiatives from Burundi to set up a fiber network covering the whole country as it has been done in Rwanda , and the fact that they are planning an aerial survey of 50 cm accuracy , this will go in hands of quest for reference stations which are not yet dense in almost all parts of Africa except perhaps South Africa
Initiatives like AFREF will get a good occasion to show case the progress with initiatives to set up national geodetic network in plan like in Malawi , Rwanda and other parts of the continents.
Nigeria having done so far good in integration of their National geodetic network with their proposed 35 continuous reference stations in pipeline would be a show case for a west African continent with the same initiatives in Ghana , Senegal and other west African countries .In the recent ESRI user conference which took place in california , numerous African institutions were awarded in recognition of their use of the GIS tools for sustainable developpement , National Land centre of Rwanda scooping the GIS award in the same annual mega conference in USA.
Uganda and Tanzania having discovered the hiden under soil petroleum potentials thanks to the geospatial technologies used like the aerial survey an other means makes the East African region the potential market for the big geospatial companies to explore the un tapped market as the Trimble CEO highlighted in the interview where he refered Africa as the near future growing market even than China and India
Nairobi University being among the organisers is sign in the academia confidence to be part of the change Africa needs from it's research institutions to tap in to socio economic transformation needed in the develpmment of geospatial technologies in the continent beeing involved in technology awereness and technology transfer to the citizens
A good occasion also to network with other players and governements institutions to make the use of geospatial technologies a reality in african context
Meet you there !!
