Building Geospatial Competences in Tanzanian Universities With Open Source Solutions

Abstract

The GEO-ICT is an institutional cooperation project aiming at improving the quality and societal relevance of geospatial and ICT research and education at the Universities of Dar es Salaam (UDSM), Ardhi University (ARU), State University of Zanzibar (SUZA) and Sokoine University of Agriculture (SUA). Jointly with the University of Turku (UTU) Finland, the institutions focus on strengthening geospatial and ICT skills of the staff, establishing new curricula, upgrading supportive infrastructures and creating synergetic cooperation modalities with different stakeholders in the society. In this paper we share how our practical experiences of the cooperation, including what is the background for the establishment of institutional cooperation between these universities, how is the project operating in practice, what type of activities and cooperation modalities we do together and how do we think institutional cooperation contributes to the advancement of geospatial expertise in Tanzania and what is the role of open source solutions in this development.

Social Innovations in Geo-Ict Education at Tanzanian Universities for Improved Employability (Geoict4e)

“…In Tanzania, geospatial-ICT education has taken giant steps during the last years in terms of new degree programmes, growth of basic geospatial data and technology skills of staff and students and new infrastructures and tools (Käyhkö et al 2018a). This has been a result of multiple co-existing initiatives and developments in geospatial and ITC education, research and capacity building activities between Tanzanian universities and their many international partners.…”

“…Universities alone, however, have limited influence on digital markets and thus much more cooperation is needed with innovation actors to cocreate transformative change and the future labour demand. In this paper, we present an overall methodology and key activities of an institutional geospatial and ICT education development project "GeoICT4e" (2020-2024), which expands the well-established long-term institutional cooperation of the University of Turku (UTU, Finland) with Tanzanian universities since early 2000 (Käyhkö et al, 2018a). GeoICT4e focuses on improving management and teaching capacities of Tanzanian universities in socially innovative geospatial and ICT education by improving both staff competence and students learning opportunities, as well as creating open and widely access to e-learning assets and co-creation spaces for the students for their improved multi-domain skills development and better future employment opportunities.…”

“…Experts also work closely in university-specific teams to develop their localized learning service solutions based on collectively produced e-assets. Teams continue an already earlier initiated development of undergraduate and postgraduate programs and courses towards improved contents and pedagogy (Käyhkö et al 2018a, Leinonen et al 2018. Institutional confidence, co-learning and sharing of good practices is grounded on individual experts knowing each other and being motivated to share their experiences related to institutional opportunities and challenges and piloting new solutions.…”

Applications and Challenges of Information and Communication Technology in the Forest Sector: A Case Study of Morogoro Municipality, Tanzania

“…It is evident that ICT is having wide impacts on the forest sector, from silviculture to the marketing of forest products and the recreational use of forests. With the increasing access to reliable and up-to-date location-based digital information through technologies such as Global Positioning Systems (GPS), cloud-based satellite image archives, open-source software, telecommunication and mobile technology [10], the opportunity for the use of ICT in the forest sectors has tremendously increased. It is therefore important to understand the applications and challenges for ICT applications in the forest sector as a strategy towards efficient use of ICT.…”

Human Geography With Open Gis as a Transformative Introductory Higher Education Course

“…Recent free and open-source software for geospatial (FOSS4G) papers have illustrated how open-source GIS applications in higher education can transform curricula, students, partnering private and public sector organizations, and even geospatial data and technology. Open source GIS is more sustainable and amenable to entrepreneurship for Tanzanian universities and students (Käyhkö et al, 2018). Students practicing OpenStreetMap humanitarian mapping gain experience in image interpretation, digitization, and understanding spatial data error while expanding their social networks and major and career aspirations (Coetzee et al, 2018).…”