WikiProject Kenya

Kenya is a Country in Africa at latitude 0°21′00.00″ South, longitude 37°19′48.00″ East.

OpenStreetMap images (and underlying map data) are freely available under OpenStreetMap License.

Getting involved & interacting with others

• For support, discussion of ideas and information about on-going activities, please subscribe to our mailing list: https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-ke
• or join us on IRC for real-time chat: irc.oftc.net #osm-ke https://irc.openstreetmap.org/
• To get started with OpenStreetMap, read the guide at LearnOSM

What to map?

This is part of a remake of this wiki page, as the Kenyan OSM community is shaping.

We can divide what needs to be mapped by geographical area or by theme.

Geography

• National level
• County/constituency/ward levels
• Town/village level
• Neighbourhood level

Themes

• Roads (incl. tracks & paths)
• Landuse
• Health & education
• Water & sanitation
• Shops
• Food & drink
• Social & government (incl. government offices, police stations, social facilities & community centers)

Using the OSM Tasking Manager (see below) we can create projects of importance, to map a chosen theme in a certain area square by square.

Road Classification

(obviously for discussion) User:Bo robert pedersen has started using the official Kenya Ministry of Transport classification dividing roads into five types:

Class A - International Trunk Roads - linking centres of international importance and crossing international boundaries or terminating at international ports

represented in OSM by highway=trunk ways

Class B - National Trunk Roads - linking nationally important centres

represented in OSM by highway=primary roads

Class C - Primary Roads - linking provincially important centres to each other or higher class roads

represented in OSM by highway=secondary roads

Class D - Secondary Roads - linking locally important centres to each other or to a more important centre or to a higher class road

represented in OSM by highway=tertiary roads

Class E - Minor Roads - any link to a minor centre

represented in OSM as highway=unclassified road

Other -Any other non-residential or non-service

represented in OSM as highway=unclassified road

Have you seen Thika Road? Thika Road has two times four lanes plus two times two parallel lanes next to it. Thika Road should be represented by highway=motorway.

In the article East_Africa_Tagging_Guidelines there are good pictures for examples of road classification.

Important general comments are listed on Highway Tag Africa.

Rail Classification

Before 2013 all of the Kenyan rails were 1000mm narrow gauge. Since 1000mm was the standard in Kenya the railroad tracks were marked as railway=rail and gauge=1000. This was according to the tag definition in the wiki.

After 2013 work on the Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) was started. The new SGR tracks will be mapped railway=rail and gauge=1435.

The old narrow gauge tracks are tagged railway=narrow_gauge

There are four rail spirals in Kenya:

• Spiral next to Equator (map)
• Spiral next to Makutano (map)
• Spiral ??
• Mazeras spiral (map)

Progress/Regions/Cities

Since 30-Nov-2010 more detailed aerial images from Bing are available. With these images you can add a lot of detail to the map even without a GPS device. The western areas of Nairobi were not covered by LandSat and Yahoo images. They are now covered by Bing images. Great detail also in Mombassa and Nakuru. Generally all of Kenya has more detail in the new Bing images.

Update April 2012: The coverage of Nairobi was increased slightly in the Bing images. E.g. Kikuyu and Limuru are now covered with high level of detail.

Update June 2012: Great! The coverage with high resolution satelite Bing images was extended to many places like Malindi, Nyeri, Kisumu, Eldoret and many more. A lot of detailed street mapping is now possible!

provinces

• Coast Province (wiki) - Kenya's ocean side - Some progress is visible.
• ...

cities

• Nairobi (map) - Kenya's capital - Good progress and local mapping projects + The "mapkibera" project. Update May 2012: Large bypasses are currently being built in Nairobi, which are not visible in the satelite images (see also Nairobi_Bypasses). As a result at the location of the bypasses the satelite images and "old" GPS tracks have to be ignored.
• Mombasa (map) - Kenya's port - Some mapping done. There are missing residential areas south of the city, northwest of the airport and along the coast to the northeast.
• Nakuru (map) - Kenya's agricultural city with lake and national park - Good mapping progress.
• Kisumu (map) - Kenya's city at lake Victoria. There are missing residential areas southeast and northwest of the city.
• Eldoret (map)
• Ruiru (map)
• Kikuyu (map)
• Thika (map)
• Machako (map)
• Garissa (map)
• Ngong (map)
• Nyeri (map)
• Kitale (map)
• Kericho (map)
• Malindi (map)

universities

• University of Nairobi (map) - Largest public university in Kenya
• Kenyatta University (map) - Second largest public university on Thika Road outside Nairobi
• Mombasa Polytechnic University College (map) - Polytechnic university in Mombasa
• Egerton University (map) - Premier Agricultural public University in Kenya.
• Kabarak University (map) - Christian based institution located twenty kilometers from Nakuru

other

• Dadaab - See details of this town, currently host to the largest refugee camp in the world.
• Ugunja ([1]) - Town along Kisumu-Busia Highway, mapping in progress (Ugunjamap project by Ugunja Community Resource Centre's Mapping Desk. http://www.erails.net/KE/charles/ucrckenya/ugunja-map/
• Naboisho Conservancy (map) - A conservancy next to Masai Mara.

Other mapping progress? Describe it here

We'd love more coverage of Kenya. Please feel free to get involved!

Projects in Kenya

This is a list of projects in Kenya

• Throughout 2010' - Effort to map Kibera, Africa's largest slum. See the Nairobi page for details
• HOT is mapping in Dadaab
• EUROSHA project
• Ugunjamap project by Ugunja Community Resource Centre's Mapping Desk
• HOT Tasking Manager projects for Kenya coordinates mappers working similarly to map various parts of Kenya

EUROSHA in Kenya

HOT is conducting a mapping project in Kenya for humanitarian purposes since mid-October 2012 as part of the EUROSHA project together with France Volontaires. The initial focus is on baseline mapping of Molo area in the Rift Valley (Molo town, Njoro and Kuresoi districts - focus on ethnic violence-prone areas) and Marigat town (flood-prone areas). All these activities are meant to support the growth of a local OSM group in Kenya and the growth of the OSM project.

• Current activities

- Mapping Marigat town and Molo river with the Tasking manager [2] : 1st mapping party in November 2012 with trainees from local communities, 2d one in January 2013 with World Vision Kenya staff.

- Mapping Njoro district with the Tasking Manager [3]: mapping party in December 2012 and January 2013

- Mapping Molo town: waiting for available satellite imagery

- Mapping Kuresoi district: waiting for available satellite imagery

• Goal

Completion of the road network and buildings.

• Eurosha GIS data

- HOT export - Marigat [4]

Data Import

• The national border of Kenya is about to be corrected from the shapefiles available from the US Department of State.

• User:Mikel has created shapefiles for counties, constituencies and wards from the IEBC data. The license of this needs to be confirmed before importing. The old administrative boundaries (provinces, districts) will then need to be removed (or changed with another tag for historical purposes).

Data Sources

• Nairobi Land Use and Building Density produced by Columbia University. ODbL licensed, very details land use, etc.

• Virtual Kenya Growing great collection of geographic data sources.

• OpenData Kenya Government OpenData Site. Some geographic data, keep an eye on it.

• International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) A diverse collection of spatial data layers, many of which relate directly to livestock and agriculture. Other layers generated include roads, railways, administrative boundaries, aiports/railways, settlements, census data, poverty, climate, waterpoints and health. Licensing is restricted to non-commercial use only.

• Data Exchange Platform for the Horn of Africa (DEPHA) Provides public GIS data for Djibouti, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Kenya, Uganda, Sudan and Somalia. Data layers for Kenya include administrative boundaries, hypsography, roads/railways, settlements, health facilities and drainage. Some metadata is not provided.

• Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (Africover) A project aimed at generating a database of GIS layers for the purpose of promoting sustainable management of environmental resources at national, regional and global levels. Kenya data includes administrative boundaries, rivers, settlements, spatially/thematically aggregated landcover, and geomorphology/landforms. We've received permission from Africover to import road, river, and administrative boundary data layers into OSM.

• World Resources Institute (WRI) An environmental think tank that provides a diversity of GIS data largely focused upon poverty and ecosystem analysis. Available resources for Kenya include base data, landcover/landform, elevation, rainfall, biodiversity/wildlife, tourism, agriculture, and population/poverty.

Aerial imagery

See Dadaab where we have a small area available during the refugee drought situation there.

External Links

• Quality control with Osmose - Quality control with Osmose