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“We are now starting to use geospatial information to forecast government efforts on areas that we were previously deprived of, and to find ways to integrate them in the economy of the country,” says Vutomi Raymond Ndlovu, a geoinformatics practitioner in the Department of Agriculture, Land Reform and Rural Development, Government of South Africa.
What is the mandate of your organization, and where is the future of the geospatial ecosystem headed?
We are the custodian of the Spatial Data Infrastructure Act, which establishes the South African Spatial Data Infrastructure. My core responsibility is on data governance as well as building platforms that allow the sharing of data in the country
We want geospatial information-driven decision-making that supports planning and service delivery in support of government actions as well as international priorities. We want to start having an agile process of developing policies, especially policies that align with geospatial technology and application.
There are a lot of possibilities in geospatial. Geospatial information and high-resolution imagery support a lot of new innovations.
What are some of the main use cases in South Africa for geospatial technologies and data integration?
Speaking on behalf of the Department of Agriculture, Land Reform and Rural Development, during Covid, we were tasked by the President to provide support to farmers, subsistence farmers or upcoming farmers. One of the key challenges was locating where these farmers are as well as verifying whether they are actually farmers in that specific area.
For that we developed a technology, called PESI, using the ArcGIS platform and Survey 123. We deployed and asked farmers to basically capture the information on their farms and with the use of imagery we verified the information whether the farm exists or not.
Also, on a regular basis, the Department of Agriculture collect field core boundaries that assisted us in knowing exactly where people are farming in a particular area. There are many applications, I’m just highlighting this one because it’s one of the areas, where people see us in the country as the department, and they always remember that we were there for them in their time of need. And through that support, we were able to make sure that farmers survive during the Covid pandemic.
Apart from using geospatial data, do you use any other technology like Machine Learning or Blockchain? As you said, you need to verify whether the person is actually a farmer or not, so for that verification mechanism and to ensure that there is total end-to-end transparency, was any other technology also deployed in this process?
We worked with a mobile communication company, which assisted us in filling the forms using SMSs, which made it very easy for us because the majority of the population has a phone. We used their platform to be able to get information as quickly as possible and it allowed us to validate the information quickly. We are not there yet in terms of using advanced technologies, like the blockchain or other technologies that are coming. But we hope in the future we’ll be able to use some of these technologies to advance the different interests that we have in the country.
South Africa is a very promising country in terms of economic growth in terms of the potential that it harbours, but there are also unique challenges just like any other country. What do you think are the main socioeconomic challenges that spatial thinking and a coordinated geospatial roadmap can help solve for future generations?
If you look at the Gini co-efficiency inequality index, you will see that we are one of the most unequal countries. It comes with a long history of apartheid or special segregation. We are now starting to use geospatial information to forecast government efforts on areas that we were previously deprived of and to find ways to integrate them into the economy of the country going into the future.
But it’s not an easy task, especially changing a system that was built for many years. But through the use of geospatial technology, we are able to put our budget or our funding in the public sector and target areas that were highly impacted by some of the decisions of the past. We are seeing some changes and some impacts in the application of geospatial information.
When you talk about inequality, it persists hugely in land holdings as well. How do you think the land patterns can be modernized so that farmers and smallholders can benefit from the mix of space and location technologies?
In the last audit report, we found out that a majority of the land is in the hands of the few people in the country. And this is a challenge that our country is seeking to address, aggressively but also cautiously.
One of the strategies, that is something that is being discussed, is to try and see how we can seek what rights they have, especially those people living in the former rural areas because they are the ones who are sitting on a portion of land but without any security.
Meaning that anything at any given time can happen. And then the other challenge is that without security they are also unable to obtain economic benefits from their land ownership. For instance, they can’t take up a bond and put it as a trustee or put that land as a form of security at the bank in exchange for a loan or another monetary emergency.
This is something that as a country we are still discussing, to try and see how we secure land, especially in the rural areas.
At the UNWGIC 2022 in Hyderabad, a person from Ghana told me that did a study on how to use drones and imagery to survey land and be able to demarcate at an accuracy different boundaries which are registrable in the country.
We as a country are going to take into consideration and see how we can apply drone information or high-resolution imagery as another way to survey the different properties.
Because appointing a land surveyor to do the actual survey, cost a lot of money and that amount of money we currently do not have as a country. And we can use it for other things, for instance, upgrading the informal settlements or removing the bucket toilet system. We have a lot of competing priorities that we need to address, and if we can find technologies that will make sure that we minimize the expenditure of our efforts, then as a country we will greatly welcome those initiatives.
Does South Africa have any digital transformation pipeline? Because all of these things would require connectivity to the last. How do you plan to ensure that?
We do not have a digital transformation strategy. We do have a policy statement that is made by our leaders, but without a formal strategy on how you can roll out certain things, it becomes difficult to implement those strategies.
We are working on the issue of diversity because it is very critical. We are looking for ways how we can start creating maps for use of blind people. Things like, how do we start creating products as professionals that will talk to the different user groups.
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