Volunteers put Kigali on Google Map

The Private Sector Federation, in partnership with several youth groups, have come up with an initiative to extend various ICT innovations to communities.

Thursday, August 30, 2012

The Private Sector Federation, in partnership with several youth groups, have come up with an initiative to extend various ICT innovations to communities.The initiative dubbed e-umuganda, will embark on mapping several buildings in Kigali city, to ease their accessibility. "We found that when you go to Google Maps you cannot recognise some of the areas and buildings in Kigali,” Alex Ntare, the director of ICT chamber in PSF, told The New Times.The initiative is comprised 48 people from four Kigali technology communities namely Ihills, Cont Park, Rwanda Open Source Community, Rwanda Gamers and Knowledge Lab (Klab)."We started last month with 26 people and we were able to map 194 facilities like ministries and schools in Kigali then we can move to the other parts of the country,” Ntare said.He explained that the project is voluntary just like community service commonly known as "Umuganda” where the volunteers do the work using their own laptops and knowledge. The volunteers convene at Klab an innovation space where young entrepreneurs get opportunity to use their skills and get help from mentors.It is located at Telecom House. Ntare appealed to the government institutions to provide them with the required data like street names to enrich their initiative.