The Regional Centre for Mapping of Resources for Development (RCMRD) has announced the winners of the 2023 RCMRD Map Competition themed ‘’Environmental and Biodiversity Conservation Efforts to Protect our Natural Resources’’. The competition aimed to promote the use of maps and Earth Observation and create awareness of the data-sharing geo-portals and observatories to allow users to discover GIS datasets and creatively use them to develop innovative solutions.
The competition recorded participation from 25 African countries, including Angola, Botswana, Burundi, Comoros, Djibouti, Eritrea, Eswatini, Ethiopia, Kenya, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Rwanda, Seychelles, Somalia, South Africa, South Sudan, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe. The participants competed in the School Category (Per School Award) and the Professional Category (Individual Award), focusing on initiatives connected to environmental and biodiversity conservation efforts aimed at safeguarding or raising awareness about natural resources.
The Per School Award was subdivided into Primary School and Secondary School categories, with a EUR 2,000 award prize. Tr Adam Khaemba and Tr Patricia Muthusi (Grade 6 and 8) from the Valley Bridge Primary School in Nairobi, Kenya, emerge as the Primary School Category winners. Their initiatives centred on “Save the Environment – Two Sides of a Coin”. While Mombasa and Beatrice Oyange (Grade 9) from Shree Swaminarayan Academy, Kenya, emerged winners in the Secondary Category. Their initiative centered around the theme “My Tusks are Valuable”.
The Individual Award category was split into two sub-categories, Land Theme and Marine Theme, with a EUR 2,000 award prize. Frank Anderson from Dar es Salaam, Tunisia, emerged as the winner for the Land Theme category. His initiative centred around “Safeguarding Tanzania’s Eastern Arc Mountains Forests”. Julius Ivan from Kampala, Uganda, emerged as the Marine Theme category winner. His initiative centred on the “Restoration of the Protection Zone of Lake Nakivaale, Uganda’’.
Dompezodwa Nhlapho from Maseru, Lesotho, emerged as the overall winner, with an award prize of EUR 4,000. Her initiative centred on “Mapping Invasive Species in Lesotho Wetlands”.
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