# OpenStreetMap Uganda Board Elections Candidate Statement: Ingrid Martha Kintu

**Name:** Ingrid Martha Kintu
**Occupation:** Regional Ambassador/GIS & Remote Sensing Analyst
**OSM User Name:** Ingrid k

## How did you become involved in MapUganda/OpenStreetMap?

I first became involved with OpenStreetMap (OSM) when I was recruited in 2015 to participate on the Mapping Financial Services Uganda project in the Eastern Region and Kampala district, and later subscribed for membership with MapUganda. I have been an active member since, actively contributing to OSM through various humanitarian causes and events.

## What is your involvement as a member/volunteer with MapUganda and OpenStreetMap?
My involvement with OSM spans a period of over five years. My inception into OSM was under the Mapping Financial Services Uganda project in the Eastern Region and Kampala district. This project was centered around crowdsourcing financial service locations, education and health facilities in the aforementioned area. My role as a team lead on this project was to guide my team during the data collection exercise and ensure data quality through identifying gaps and data cleaning as per the OSM tagging standards.

In 2016, a YouthMappers chapter was created at Makerere University for which I was privileged to be the Vice President. During my term, my team and I held trainings on OSM and OSM tools to enhance the students’ skills in this area. We also held a number of mapathons in support of a number of ongoing mapping initiatives at the time such as the Malaria Elimination Campaign. This campaign in particular was very memorable because of the cohesion that was forged among the chapters in Uganda. My team and I also delivered trainings to Land Survey and Geomatics students at Makerere University after OSM and Open Data tools were incorporated into the course’s curriculum for the recess semester, which largely contributed to the chapter’s continuity.

In 2018, I was privileged to be selected as a YouthMappers Research Fellow. For the duration of this fellowship, I carried out a project in Kyaka II Refugee Settlement - Kyegegwa district. This project aimed at mapping for community resilience, particularly for vulnerable groups which in this case were refugees. This project supported the remote mapping of buildings and roads in the settlement was well as adding data on amenities such as health, education, water and sanitation facilities through a field mapping campaign. This data was used to assess the adequacy of the facilities for the refugees. In the same year, I supported the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team Uganda (HOT Uganda) in assessing their data model as well participated on a number of tasks and supervised remote mappers.

Currently, I am a YouthMappers Regional Ambassador for East Africa. My role in this position is to support the growth of the YouthMappers network by recruiting highly motivated students to organize, create, and formally establish university-based chapters to build on the use of OSM and Open data tools for addressing both humanitarian and development needs at various scales.

## What does MapUganda mean to you?
MapUganda is the embodiment of the value of crowdsourced local knowledge at a national scale and beyond through leveraging the adoption and use of open geo-technologies in addressing pertinent issues affecting ordinary people. It is an organization which is steered by and boasts a membership of passionate individuals whose goal is to make an impactful contribution to social, economic and infrastructural development, both locally and globally.

MapUganda provides practical approaches to understanding development challenges from a spatial perspective, as well as furnishes individuals with more ways to contribute meaningfully through sharing knowledge and being an agent of change in our dynamic world.

## Why do you want to be a board member?
My interest in this role stems from my motivation to complement MapUganda’s modus operandi with new ideas and ways of influencing change. I not only believe that I have the necessary skills and experience to make a valuable contribution but also have a strong conviction to give back to my community. There is really no better way to do this than to be part of the team which actively seeks to address challenges and overall facilitate development at the grass root level.

## As a board member of MapUganda what do you see as your most important responsibility?
My most important responsibility is to rethink resource mobilization strategies, identify untapped opportunities, broker strategic partnerships and ultimately ensure that MapUganda keeps sight of both its vision and objectives.

## What do you plan to focus on as a MapUganda board member?
My main area of focus as a board member will be to foster the growth of the network and promote innovations of mappers in Uganda through the YouthMappers initiative. My role as a Regional Ambassador gives me an authoritative stance to voice all that is required to nurture a vibrant community of mappers at university level. I will bring my wide berth of experience in mobilizing people and resources to join various MapUganda initiatives and projects.

I would also like to focus on contributing my technical skills and expertise to inform strategic direction on technical aspects in GIS and Remote Sensing. With my proven track record in developing proposals and reports, I intend to offer my guidance to the teams involved to ensure proper documentation of initiatives and quality outputs.

## What do you see as MapUganda’s greatest challenge and how do you plan to help MapUganda meet that challenge?
MapUganda’s greatest challenge, in my view, also happens to be its greatest opportunity to act as a change agent. The uptake of OSM and other open source geospatial tools by the government and strategic decision makers is not at the level that it should be. This further strains the limited resources available to MapUganda’s operations and scaling up its initiatives. A surefire way of abating this is by creating awareness about the potential of these technologies and their role in contributing feasibly to the Sustainable Development Goals.