afrimapr is a one year project running in 2020 funded through the Wellcome Open Research Fund.

afrimapr will create R building blocks and learning resources to make it easier to make data-driven maps in Africa.

The created resources will be promoted in Africa and beyond to initiate a community of users and developers to maintain and improve them.

The R building blocks will make it easier to perform spatial data management tasks that should be straightforward, but seldom are, including: summarising data by administrative regions of different levels; joining and displaying data referenced by administrative region names; access to environmental, socio-economic and health data and displaying data in static maps and interactive web applications.

Components will be designed for ease of use to target new users of R.

We will run workshops in Liverpool, Ethiopia, Malawi and South Africa trialling and promoting resources.

We hope to build various communities around the building blocks:

• developers who can contribute to the R code, expand functionality, and make the tools sustainable
• users who can try the software out in real live settings, tell us what features they would like to see, and write scripts utilising the afrimapr building blocks in their own contexts and countries
• instructors who can help to teach others to use the afrimapr building blocks

You can get involved by:

• adding an issue to our Suggestions & Requests repository
• finding an issue to work on from our Suggestions & Requests repository
• getting in touch via our Google Groups email at [email protected]
• following us on Twitter or Tweet at us @afrimapr
• visit our website at http://afrimapr.org

We look forward to be working with you!