The Mapillary challenge in Uganda resulted in great mapping experiences and over 100,000 new images of the country. Our Ambassador Geoffrey announces the winner who'll be holding a Mapillary workshop at State of the Map Africa.

Coverage in Uganda collected during the challenge

For two months, from 1st April to 31st May, YouthMappers in Uganda participated in a challenge to find the best Mapillary Mapper. The aim of the challenge was to grow the Mapillary community in Uganda as well as build the capacity of university students in mapping and crowdsourcing street-level images.

To launch the challenge, each university chapter organised a Mapillary photo walk where the participants installed the application on their phones and mapped their university campus on Mapillary.

Team Mappers for Life—Uganda Christian University Mbale YouthMappers Chapter

The challenge was boosted by Mapillary who sent a full pack of Mapillary goodies to the YouthMappers including T-shirts, bicycle mounts, walking mounts, car mounts, and stickers. With these kinds of tools it was time to share Uganda—the pearl of Africa—with the rest of the world through a competition which took place at two levels, the best contributor and the best team.

After two months of mapping, the YouthMappers have contributed over 100,000 photos to Mapillary, covering a distance of 1,700 kilometers. We are glad to announce the winners of the challenge. Musundi Hillary and team Mappers for Life, the Uganda Christian University YouthMappers chapter, emerged as the winner and the best chapter respectively, with the winner uploading over 26,000 photos covering a distance of 336 kilometers.

Uganda Mapillary challenge final leaderboard

One of the objectives of the Mapillary challenge was to be able to showcase Mapillary solutions to the government and businesses in Africa, which we hope to achieve through the State of the Map Africa conference in Kampala, Uganda, from 8th to 10th July. There will be two sessions on Mapillary, one of them a training session by the challenge winner to introduce participants to Mapillary.

The Mapillary challenge continues next year with the purpose of growing the community even further beyond the Ugandan borders.

/Geoffrey