Today, there is an increased awareness of African governments and other sectors of society on the importance of geospatial technology in socioeconomic development as a tool that enables sound decision making for sustainable development, economic growth, resource exploitation, environmental management, and social progress monitoring. Observing the current trends and changes to business logics involving geospatial information, and also looking at expected technological progress, our work over the past decade has corroborated that geospatial information management is neither technology, nor data itself, nor human resources. It is after all a matter of lack of appropriate policies and institutional governance for information management in most of African countries.

The presentation reviews current progress and challenges in advancing holistic geospatial information management and governance at global and national level in Africa. Particular attention is paid to the ongoing effort of developing the African cluster of the Global Geospatial Information Management (GGIM) and its alignment with national efforts as well as international perspectives and its contribution to the wider global initiatives.

Lastly, the presentation also explores interesting avenues on how to leverage in an orderly manner the benefits of geospatial science and technology for a people-centered, free market based and export-oriented socio-economic development.