finished projects

Mapmaking and training with the Water Resources Department

Maps are crucially important as decision-making aids for sustainable land use and planning. Our program is already in the second year of carrying out training and further education courses for geographic information systems (GIS), in which the potential and limitations of modern spatial information technologies are presented and discussed. These courses are being held on the initiative of the Water Resources Department at the Ministry of Land, Water, and Environment, which is also responsible for the organization and for providing premises and equipment (computers for the participants).

The courses are extremely popular in Eritrea, going beyond ministerial boundaries. In the last course, held in October 2000, technicians from eight different ministries took part. This means that in addition to the actual training, the course has important networking effects, with the participants exchanging experience and often maintaining contact afterward. During the training courses, the Sustainable Land Management Program has also produced a set of digital maps of the whole of Eritrea. The fundamental data they contain provide support for planning work in sustainable land management. However, they can also be used much more widely.

For example, the maps are being used as the basis for building the telecommunications network in Eritrea (the cellular phones project). The city of Asmara is also using the maps, as well as a satellite image provided by our program, as the basis for its land register plan. This plan is crucially important, as it will provide binding solutions to previously unsolved land ownership issues dating from the socialist period - an important contribution to sustainable land use in the suburban area, where horticulture makes an important contribution to the population's food security.

Thomas Kohler is scientific collaborator at the Center for Development and Environment, University of Berne.