Beyond borders – AfriGIS produces verified geospatial data for Africa

There are many assignable data overlays that can be used to enrich your dataset via the API, including points of interest, administrative political boundaries, cadastral data, deeds and censuses, street axes, postal code regions, sectional plans, gated communities, development range, aggregate suburbs and more.

Geospatial data is essential to many industries

Retailers such as fast food franchises use geospatial data to position their outlets and improve their profitability. Couriers use it to improve first-time delivery success rates. Banks and financial services use it for compliance purposes, understanding customer segments, and positioning products and services. Governments use it for elections, providing services and collecting taxes. Almost every industry and sector has use cases for geospatial information and analytics.

However, until recently, finding verified and validated geospatial data on Africa’s administrative boundaries and postal codes was a major challenge for organizations. Varying administrative structures and terminology across countries make standardization almost impossible, and frequent political and administrative changes often lead to outdated or incomplete data.

Many African countries also have limited resources for accurate data collection and maintenance. Additionally, accessibility issues arise from limitations in data distribution and the lack of centralized data repositories. Quality issues coupled with sensitive political and security issues further complicate the availability of reliable and detailed geospatial information necessary for a variety of development and logistics applications.

How AfriGIS built the dataset

AfriGIS has taken a bold approach to collecting, updating and standardizing geospatial data to ensure that it meets the necessary validity and reliability criteria in a variety of applications, from urban planning and resource management to logistics and governance.

This ambitious project, which took place over three years, required the meticulous collection and integration of regional data to address the specific logistical challenges facing various industries in Africa.

“Our focus on Africa is driven by the demand for better solutions from African countries that have been left behind by technological development and face significant challenges in access to modern digital tools and infrastructure,” says Charl Fouché, chief operating officer at AfriGIS. “We recognized the critical need for more accurate and comprehensive data to address the unique challenges of parcel delivery. Logistics companies are struggling with the lack of detailed postal codes or reliable administrative boundaries, which are crucial for the precise distribution of goods. The new AfriGIS datasets have increased the detail and accuracy of the information available, going beyond street maps to include detailed local knowledge gathered from communities.”

Administrative levels vary across the continent. For example, South Africa’s jurisdiction includes provinces, district councils and municipalities, while Namibia’s regions are divided into electoral districts, and the DRC includes provinces, territories and cities divided into sectors, chiefdoms and groups in rural settings, and municipalities in urban settings.

Currently, administrative levels and localities have been linked across all 54 African countries, and the data is maintained to ensure it is up-to-date and accurate. Developing a system that could individually respond to each country’s needs required in-depth understanding and a tailored approach to ensure data was accurate and useful for both logistical and administrative purposes.

“Our task was to align our APIs with international standards and make them adaptable at different administrative levels,” says Fouché. “The project took three years to complete and involved collecting and integrating data from various sources to map all the cities, towns and villages and their corresponding administrative structures. We now have generic APIs that connect postcodes to villages across Africa, making our database unique and extensive.”

How geospatial data drives business

Business is done where there are people. Knowing where people and businesses are located is key; Understanding what else is happening in these locations gives you a significant advantage in accelerating and unlocking business opportunities. This is something that many organizations in African countries have been trying to achieve, but so far it has been almost impossible.

With assignable data, stores and business locations can be visually represented. When you layer this with data on activity, income and other demographics, as well as traffic and weather, it enables advanced modeling for retailers and other businesses. They can use this information to plan special promotions related to, for example, holidays, weather conditions and heavy traffic for large-scale sporting events.

By meeting digital and physical infrastructure needs across African countries, citizens and public and private sector organizations can also access and order products online, even in remote areas without physical infrastructure. This could enable countries and businesses to make significant progress across the continent.

“In South Africa, we take online shopping for granted,” says Fouché. “But finding and ordering products online significantly improves the quality of life for people in more isolated African communities. It offers greater convenience, greater selection and more competitive prices. For residents of remote or underdeveloped regions, e-commerce eliminates the need for long and expensive trips to urban centers to obtain goods and services. This reduces the daily stress of purchasing basic necessities. Shopping online also allows you to explore products and technologies that may not be available locally, helping to improve living standards.”

AfriGIS has shown that the constraints of physical infrastructure can be alleviated with digital solutions, adds Fouché. “By setting a precedent in the logistics and mapping industry, we are confident that our detailed, tailored data solutions will improve service performance and reach across a continent as diverse as Africa.”

About AfriGIS

AfriGIS is a leading geospatial information science company in South Africa that specializes in location-sensitive data and solutions. It provides customers around the world with a suite of web tools and APIs to connect, enhance and enrich their own data with location intelligence, insights and trusted data. The organization was founded in 1997 and is celebrating over 25 years of activity. It is a Level 1 certified, broad-based Black Economic Empowerment (B-BBEE) company with over 100 employees in Pretoria, Durban and Cape Town in South Africa, Dublin in Ireland and Dhaka in Bangladesh.