Why Roads Data is Critical for African Agriculture

The value of accurate roads data is understood in fields such as transportation, logistics and urban planning. However the value of accurate and freely available roads data is often overlooked or mis-understood when thinking of agriculture, especially in Africa. Outdated and often inaccurate sources of roads data are routinely used for market accessibility studies, transportation planning and logistics. Now, with additional sources of roads information available to researchers for modeling and to local agricultural extension agents for planning, the landscape has grown more complicated.

AGCommons  identified this early as a critical need and partnered with CIESIN and IMMAP on the Ethiopia Roads Quick Win project. But even since the launch of that project Google Map Maker data has been made available for Africa and Open Street Map has reached over 200,000 registered users. Availability of data however does not mean its the right data, especially in Africa where road condition or seasonality can be the most accurate determinant of accessibility.

Most researchers and national planning agencies have been relying on the old VMAP0 or Africover because it is widely available and well understood. Now even that has been imported into Open Street Map. All these changes in the landscape leads to the question “which one should I use?”. That of course depends.

A quick visual analysis in QGIS reveals a stark difference when drawn at the same scale. The screens below shows the available streets for Bamako (site of the next WhereCampAfrica) with Google Map Maker on the left and Open Street Map on the right.

Google Map Maker Bamako, Mali.	Open Street Map Bamako, Mali

The AGCommons program is hoping to accelerate existing data collection efforts and help people focused on developing African agriculture, be it agricultural extension, research & modeling or national planning obtain and use the right data. The Ethiopia Roads project has proven that cost effective data collection on intra-city roads is feasible. The recent Map Kibera project has proven that small scale and very local projects can produce local information cheaply and quickly in Africa. Over the coming months and years AGCommons  will be working with various programs and vendors such as gRoads, Google Outreach and Open Street Map to bring the best available data to those who can use it to further develop agriculture across Africa.