International News - Serving Ghana with GIS

By Erica L. Addison

NSBE member Ebenezer Odoi (center) provided IT solutions to low-income communities in Ghana, in 2008 and 2009.

When NSBE member Ebenezer Odoi arrived in Ghana in 2008, he went ready and willing to help people in Agbogbloshie, a poor, urban community in Accra. Odoi , a Ghanaian national now in the U.S. attending The Ohio State University,  signed on as a volunteer with Self Help Initiative Support Services’ (SISS’) Urban Lifeline Project. Although this particular project had focused on providing practical skills such as textile-making, hairdressing, beadmaking and catering, the agency was interested in setting up an information and computer technology (ICT) component “to address the ‘Digital Gap’ faced by slum-dwellers,” Odoi says.

This is where Odoi could help. He helped teach the Ghanaian locals Microsoft Access, basic GPS data collection and questionnaire administration. During his stay, he also helped set up IT equipment and created a wi-fi hotspot, serving those in a two-kilometer radius with free Internet service.

SISS is a grassroots organization that provides services to promote and support existing self-help groups. Odoi realized that the organization would be better able to serve the local population if it had a better grasp on exactly what conditions it was facing in the project area. So Odoi began researching the feasibility of building and installing a geographic information system (GIS) for the area, which would allow for more efficient planning.

“I wanted to do this to help drive the decision-making process,” says Odoi. “Instead of not helping anyone at all, they can build a query and find the people with the most need.”

With the help of eight local Ghanaians — four to complete field work and four to assist in data entry — Odoi began the data collection for the GIS and, he notes proudly,  did so without the help of any professionals involved in data collection or processing. The workers recorded and entered several data points, including locations of roads and footpaths, markets, lorry parks, artisan and public enterprises, schools, health posts and prostitution centers.

The first three weeks of Odoi’s next visit to Ghana, in the summer of 2009, were spent constructing SISS’ website, an undertaking he faced alone. At the request of social workers, he mapped out the location of microlenders, possible loan beneficiaries and “trainee selection zones,” and included them as layers in the GIS.

“Skills training coupled with microfinancing is a very good way of empowering the marginalized,” Odoi says. “This could be the hand that pulls Africa out of poverty.”

Now back in the U.S., Odoi is enrolled in Ohio State’s Master of Science in geodetic engineering program, majoring in geographic information systems. He plans, funding permitting, to incorporate his experience working on the SISS project into a thesis on developing a slum information and monitoring system using GIS technology.

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