Open Mapping Advocacy Network: Strengthening Mapping Capacities Across West and North Africa
The Open Mapping Advocacy Network (OMAN) is a regional network of contributors across West and North Africa who collaborate to amplify the use of open data and open mapping for humanitarian and development work. This fellowship brought contributors together to design a course by first engaging with their community to understand challenges and how the course could address them, and culminated with a webinar including demos and real-life case study of how the tools covered in the course have served as a guide to turning map data into practical solutions for more inclusive and sustainable urban decision-making.
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The Open Mapping Advocacy Network (OMAN) was developed by the West and Northern Africa Hub to respond to a regional capacity gap: many communities, organizations, and local actors hold deep knowledge of where they live, but access to open mapping skills, geospatial tools, and structured learning pathways to turn that knowledge into practical action comes with hurdles. This limits how effectively local stakeholders can participate in project design, use data for decision-making, and align mapping work with real development priorities.
OMAN addresses that gap by building a network of contributors who could both use and teach open mapping methods. Its purpose was not only to improve technical ability, but also to support people working in humanitarian response, sustainable cities, public health, climate resilience, and related sectors with better access to open data and stronger local participation. By expanding training and community-led use of mapping tools, this initiative will help communities become more involved in planning processes and better equipped to support sustainable local development.
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The project centered on learning, collaboration, and practical engagement. The OMAN fellows, one English-speaking and one French-speaking, worked together to develop surveys to understand gaps within their communities, which informed how the course took shape. They connected with NGOs, organizations, and universities so that the course could connect to project implementation struggles and ways to support existing curricula. Fellows also engaged institutions, youth-led groups, and geospatial communities, which brought in perspectives beyond a single organization or country context.
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The result of this research is the course "Open Data and Mapping for Sustainable Cities" which was designed to inform participants in how open geospatial data can support inclusive and sustainable urban development.
The fellowship also included the Open Data and Mapping for Sustainable Cities Webinar held on 21 February 2026, where fellows created a shared learning space for participants from different countries. The walkthrough emphasized how communities can leverage open data and tools to assess, plan, and advocate for sustainable practices in their city. The webinar also had a guest speaker, a community member who had already used these tools and data to advocate for inclusion in their city planning.
