News — 26 June, 2018

Bringing together West African OSM communities: OSM & GIS workshops in Lomé, Togo

OSM & GIS worshops in Togo in May 2018

OSM Mali participated to OSM and GIS workshops from May 15th to 25th, 2018 in Lomé City. These workshops were part of an initiative of LesLibresGeographes and the Espace OpenStreetMap Francophone, ProjetEOF, and were supported by the International Organization of the Francophone, OIF.

25 Trainers from West African OSM Communities contributed to these sessions facilitated by experts from Les Libres Geographes. The main objective of those workshops, called #ActionsOSMTogo2018, was to train trainers from West African OSM Communities, to strengthen their technical and organizational capacity in their advocacy of the OpenStreetMap Project and the Sustainable Development Goals.

The first week focused on organizational and governance aspects in order to help those trainers to manage the project budgets, the financial reports and also discuss how to strengthen the role of women and leadership in OSM and ICT.

The second week included more technical sessions, learning news tools and an opportunity to share experiences around achieved projects and current ones in different countries in West Africa. The second week was also an opportunity for me to present the HOT Microgrant impact in Mali and to encourage other communities to apply for the Microgrant program in the future.

This #OSMTogoaction 2018 ended with expressions of hope for more and more workshops like this which bring together different OSM communities members, to help them become more skilled and to strengthen their social and professional relationships.