Recap of AfricaGIS: A Geospatial Technology Conference

On Monday, October 26, 2009, 27 members of Google’s staff and around 200 people from around the world and Africa (I’ve heard conflicting reports of higher numbers) descended upon the capital city of Uganda for a technology conference dedicated to the topic of geospatial data and information systems. The week-long event (still going at the time of this post) was an effort to raise awareness about GIS technologies as they relate to NGO’s, charities, governments, SME’s, mobile operators, charities, and more. From the conference website:

AFRICAGIS is the premier conference and exhibition focusing on geo-information technologies and applications in Africa. The principal objective of AFRICAGIS is to provide a platform for geo-information professionals from Africa to learn about geo-information technology and its applications. It provides a forum for geo-information professionals to meet, interact, and be updated on new developments, products and emerging trends and issues.

The conference language is English with simultaneous translation into French of the plenary and some of the parallel sessions. There will be Keynote addresses, 20-minute paper presentations, followed by a 15-minute discussion and 60-minute facilitated general discussion at the end of each session. Poster sessions will be organized with flexibility to allow participants learn as much from the presenters in an environment as a ?market place?. (sic) There will also be ample space for exhibition by vendors and various organizations.

I didn’t have the opportunity to truly participate in the conference as I was only there for a day, but I did manage to catch a few brief talks and I visited the trade show tent for a brief cocktail reception. In terms of facilities, it doesn’t get more posh (at least not in Uganda) than the massive Speke Resort where this was held.

For instance, this room seems to have been completely reserved for laptop users and between session cross-talk.  (I nicknamed it the Twitter room.)

This shot only captures about a fourth of the space we were in.

As presentations were made, people typed away, often looking up the topics being discussed.

The Google booth. I arrived at the tent during lunch so no one was around.

The cocktail reception was a great place to decompress after a long day.

There many other companies were also represented like the GeoEye team.

The real inspiration here was that a tech event of this scale happened in Kampala, it’s a really good sign for the region. I think the fact that Google got more people on the ground was also significant. To often the people producing things for the African market have no context, or experience with how things operate here…at least not outside of the world of NGOs. The conference was a little long, a week probably could have been compressed to three days, giving international visitors more time to actually see the real city, the local university, and perhaps a few local businesses. And while it’s great to target NGOs, governments, educational institutions and charities, the local private sector was almost completely ignored. However, hopefully this was was just the beginning of more interaction corporations that offer these services and the local development scene.

I should mention however, that the independently organized Wherecamp on Friday, will address this very oversight in typical ad-hoc fashion.

http://www.africagis2009.org/

http://google-africa.blogspot.com/

http://sites.google.com/a/earthoutreach.org/kampala/