Nicolas Chavent and Séverin Menard
This talk will present the rise of active, self-standing grassroots communities in Haiti, Western and Central Africa since 2010 resulting from a unique set of continued support actions replicable in other territories, by an ensemble of speakers from (at least) France, Burkina Faso, Senegal and Togo
This breakout session will produce a narrative about how since 2010, OpenStreetMap communities emerged in Haiti and expanded to Western and Central Africa after 2012 partly as the result of a combined set of support actions spanning technical and organizational OSM trainings, voluntary and professional OSM mapping projects, OSM local and international volunteering programs, documentation as well as preparedness and crisis mapping work... Tied to the overall support of the global OSM community and the commitment of Haitian and African mappers, these actions allowed the OSM project to come forth in the form of a network of organized and self-standing communities and economic stakeholders in Haiti, Western and Central Africa cognizant of and active with OpenStreetMap, Open data and free geomatics.
Like in Milano's Bird of Feathers sessions last year, this talk will be collectively built with African mappers involved in these multi-years activities and ideally co-facilitated by those from Western Africa successful in getting visas and traveling to Heidelberg. This talk is meant to introduce a Bird of Feathers session opened to anyone active or interested in growing OSM the grassroots way in the hard environment of the countries of the Global South and especially southern countries of Africa.
### Speakers
* Nicolas Chavent (France)
* Séverin Ménard (France)
* Amadou Ndong (Senegal)
* Aimée Sama (Togo)
* Innocent Dibloni (Burkina Faso)
* Saliou Abdou (Benin)
* Racky Ly (Ivory Coast)
Additional scholars from Africa may also join.
