Having been involved on the technical aspects of project mapKibera last year, it was a  good opportunity for Upande to get involved in some actual ground work, data collection. Last year Mapkibera group led by Mikel Maron, managed to comb Kibera in a combined 5 days. The product was a detailed up to date map of Kibera from entire road network, water points, schools, community centres, to the locals’ favourite pint dens.

Organizers and partners

The Map Kibera team led by Mikel organized a one day mapping part. This May the group, organized by Mikel Maron and Primoz Kovacic was back again for another big cause; mapping one of the only two forests in Nairobi: The Karura Forest.

Mappers this time round consisted of Members of Mapkibera Group, Friends of Karura, who provided the scouts, mapping professionals, mapping enthusiasts, staff from the UN and British Embassy and Molu the scout dog. Security was also well handled with Capt Danny Alexander of the British Army and the Kenyan Forest Service. The exercise brought together a team of almost 35 mappers.

The Forest

Albeit its beauty, the forest only appears in the media, for two reasons:  News of grabbed land or reports of victims dumped after a carjacking incidence.

Not many Nairobians roaming their concrete jungle are aware that quietly at the outskirts spans a scenic (no. of years old) true jungle with an unpolluted river, a water fall and caves.

The Exercise

The party started at 9:30 am at Kenya Forestry Service Headquarters with a brief presentation of the project and mapping techniques (usage of GPS units, OpenStreetMap etc.)

Mapping parties were then divided into seven groups, each covering different sections of the forest. Some interesting like the caves and waterfalls route, to the funny ‘touch me I die’ route; apparently the area is known for the plant species, when touched it ‘plays dead’.

Luckily the group I was in took the caves and waterfall route.

Armed with GPS receivers and digital photos, the groups dispersed one after another to cover the forest. En route to the key points groups picked the GPS points of features of interest e.g. schools, clubs, residential areas etc.

After Party

After the teams were back, the GPS data, tracks and point collected were uploaded to the OSM platform

Mark Iliffe and Primoz giving presentations to the mappers on how to upload and edit collected data using JOSM to the OSM platform. JOSM editor, acronym for Java Open Street Mapping editor, is one of the tools widely used to upload, create and edit data in OSM.

Mark's presentation on using synchronized GPS and Camera to carry out mapping was an eye opener. Apparently if your GPS and Camera clocks are synchronised, it is easier to geo tag photos on JOSM since it matches time photo was taken to that point in time when GPS was tracking. This method ensures a quicker way of collecting data, no stopping, marking waypoint then taking a few photos; if you have ever used the latter method then you understand how much time can be saved with this. Hint: Photos must be descriptive.  If point is a school, take photo of something with the school name. This would greatly help to identify the point once you are editing in JOSM.

When all has been said… when all has been edited and done, we shall have a beautiful, detailed, useful and up to date map of Karura.

I am yet to find a better way of conducting a thorough mapping exercise over a short period of time. By 1600 hours we were already departing. Our task for the day, complete and well done.

Next mapping party?

Upande is currently looking for an experienced geoweb developer. Someone to help us build high quality geoweb applications. We use the latest technology to create applications of outstanding quality. The ideal candidate must be able to work independently and translate the customer’s wishes into a range of available geoweb applications built on several architectures.

Qualifications and experience:
* A higher professional or university education in GIS, Geography or ICT
* At least 3 years of professional experience in the development of successful geoweb applications using PHP, Python, Java, JavaScript (Ajax), MySQL, XHTML/CSS
* Extensive experience with KML (if you have to google KML, please don't apply) and various map APIs
* Experience with Linux preferred
* Good command of the English language
* Good communication skills
* Flexible work attitude, passionate and committed

It is important that you feel comfortable in a small company with an informal atmosphere and friendly colleagues and that you enjoy keeping tabs on the latest technological developments in the internet field.

What does Upande offer?

Challenging short term initial contract work with the potential for longer term attachment in a small, highly innovative company. Initially internal work with more outward facing roles in the future.
A competitive salary, depending on your qualifications and experience.
Interested?

If you’re interested in working with Upande, please send us your CV including sample work and references by e-mail (info[at]upande.com).

Karura Forest has had many negative associations with many Kenyans in the past, due to crime, killings and disappearance of people there in the past. As a result of this, Karura Forest is an area 'off bounds' for many people, despite the unique forest that it is with many indigenous plant and tree species, as well as a wide variety of birds monkeys and other mammals which Professor Wangari Maathai of the Green Belt Movement played a key role in saving.

Hopefully this limited access is going to change in the near future, largely due to the fact that Friends of Karura Forest, together with the Kenyan Forestry Service, are working hard to protect the unique area. Plans are to build an electric fence around the entire forest, to increase security and patrolling, ultimately with the aim to preserve the forest and allow people to enjoy its beauty and to recreate there. A very worthwhile cause which will require a lot of funding and hard work.

One project which will contribute to this aim is today's mapping of the paths and points of interest, an initiative driven by the MapKibera.org initiative, an OpenStreetMap based community approach. Today a team of volunteers, many of them recently having become mapping experts, have successfully mapped large parts of the forest. Upande was there to participate, mingle and see the forest from up close, a beautiful area! Keep an eye open for changes coming to OpenStreetMap soon.

 I got the pleasure to represent Upande at the Mobile Web East Africa, 2010 Seminar; held on the 3rd and 4th of February.

Though meant to be an East African affair, I couldn’t help but notice the absence of our neighbours’. I.e. Rwanda, a fast growing ICT country, Uganda, Burundi and Tanzania and the heavy presence of South African presentations (probably due to MWA09).

Meeting started off with a presentation by Paul Kukubo CEO Kenya ICT Board who were the co sponsors of the event. Paul focused on how their approach is to influence policy formulation, intellectual property, data protection, linkages to venture capital and basically catalyzing growth in the ICT sector between government, the public and business.

Suffice to say the first day was dominated by ‘the big boys’ presentations; namely, The ICT Board, Safaricom, Vodacom SA, Grameen Uganda, AdMob, recently acquired by Google and Rick Jouberts Yonder Media (one of my favorite presentation of the day).

The sessions were quite an eye opener. Laden with statistics, facts and figures, Mobile advertising, Partnerships with Service Providers, Government input, growth and the potentials of Mobile web in Africa. Here are some of them:- 

Africa’s mobile facts

• Africa represents 15% of the world population, but only 3.9″% of the world’s PC internet usage
• Africa’s PC Internet users have increased by 1359% from 2000 to 2009.
• 95% of the African population does not own a Smartphone.
• Nokia 3110c is the most pervasive phone in the market (3.8%), Samsung E250 is at 3.7% penetration.
• Top Smartphones are the Nokia N70 at 10.8% and then Nokia 6300 at 10.3% and then the iPhone at 8.2%.
• African Mobile Web currently has South Africa, Nigeria, Libya, Egypt and Kenya as the top 5.

Kenya's mobile facts

• There were 3.5 million internet users in Kenya last year.
• There are 500 laptops sold per day in Kenya a rise from 20, 000 sales per year.
• Cheapest data enabled devices are about Ksh 2000 in Kenya.
• 70% of mobile data users spend less than 20ksh on a monthly basis.
• Mobile users are estimated at 19.05m subscribers in Kenya with 22m of the 40m Kenyans being the addressable market (15 yrs or older).
• Industry data enabled handsets estimated at 5m or 26% of G.S.M users in Kenya.
• Cost of a 3G handset is 3 times higher than that of a non-data enabled handset.
• Mobile data users estimated to reach 10m in the next five years subject to availability of affordable devices, increase awareness, local content development and drop in data prices.
• If you partner with Safaricom, they’ll take about 60% of revenues meanwhile elsewhere in the  world, like Japan, they give 70% to the developer.

Global Facts

• The global service revenue generated from subscriptions to mobile internet access is forecasted by Informal Telecoms & Media to rise from $57 billion in 2008 to $120 billion in 2013.
• Mobile ad revenue is estimated to be at $2 billion by 2014 and total the value of marketing spent on mobile at around $6 billion.
• Mobile subscription rose from 54 million to almost 350 million between 2003 and 2008.
• On average there is 60% mobile penetration in the world. In developing countries the figure stands at 48%, which is 8x bigger than in 2000.
• Lack of fixed-line access will drive huge mobile internet usage and revenues.
• Vodacom generates 49 million ad impressions per month in South Africa.
• $540 million is the money being made in South Africa in mobile content and the question then becomes whether people can find value in local content.

MWEA10 Day 2

2nd day presentations were more focused on the developers of mobile web applications. 

Started off by a presentation from Mbugua Njihia CEO symbiotic media consortium who cased a couple of their mobile based solutions. 

Eric Hersman ‘Whiteafrican’ followed up next with a beautiful presentation on the Ushahidi. I say beautiful because it has 'location' as a major theme on its Platform. Important to note, Ushahidi are working on a Joomla platform. This would make it easier to use their platform for Websites.

Liko Agosta , founder PesaPal “Kenya’s answer to PayPal” , gave a good account of the application. Tracking back to its inception, from a simple script done from a ‘text editor’ to its complex app it is today. The biggest challenge faced by PesaPal however is Trust! Kenyans being abit weary of using the service. Hopefully Safaricoms M-pesa may have broken that Jinx.

Next presentation was on mobile application and health care in Kenya, from Dr. Kahindi Shedrack.

Steve Vosloo - Shuttleworth foundation gave a good account of E- learning using Mobile phones.

The Other notable presentation was by Jacob Kittinya of Petrol Kenya whose site www.petrol.co.ke is a location based service that lets users know of the gas stations, pump prices and their location in Nairobi. Good use of Google Maps is noted here. Application however is not yet mobile based nor interactive.

Upande is currently looking for an experienced web developer. Someone to help us build high quality web applications. We use the latest technology to create applications of outstanding quality. The ideal candidate must be able to work independently and translate the customer’s wishes into a web application.

It is important that you feel comfortable in a small company with an informal atmosphere and friendly colleagues and that you enjoy keeping tabs on the latest technological developments in the internet field.

Qualifications and experience:

• A higher professional or university education
• At least 3 years of professional experience in the development of web applications using PHP, JavaScript (Ajax), MySQL, XHTML/CSS, Python, Java
• Experience with CMS systems including Joomla
• Exposure to the geo field would be of added value
• Experience with Linux preferred
• Good command of the English language
• Good communication skills
• Flexible work attitude, passionate and committed

What does Upande offer?

Challenging short term initial contract work with the potential for longer term attachment in a small, highly innovative company. Initially internal work with more outward facing roles in the future.
A competitive salary, depending on your qualifications and experience.

Interested?

If you’re interested in working with Upande, please send us your CV including sample work and references by e-mail (info[at]upande.com).