Geodesy in East African Universities

Development of physical infrastructure – transport and communications links, water supply and irrigation – assumes a basic nation-wide framework of surveyed heights and positions. Traditional geodetic frameworks involved continuous surveyed profiles. This technology is now obsolescent and is being replaced throughout the world by satellite-based positioning, with detailed gravity field models to give height. Commercial GPS receivers can now supply latitude and longitude of an individual point anywhere in the world, cheaply and accurately. However, GPS does not give height ‘above sea level’. The latter needs a process of acquiring and processing gravity data followed by a mathematically complex and computationally demanding transformation from gravity to height. This type of height must be used for all tasks that depend on knowing what is ‘uphill’ – from planning what energy is required to transport goods to determining water levels and flow. In particular, rail links and irrigation schemes depend crucially on identifying what is ‘level’.

Description of the Action

The proposal seeks to create masters level modules in Geodesy taught in Addis Ababa with the aim adding them to modules in the Geophysics programme already taught there.

The action will:

Fund travel for all partners to attend curriculum development meetings;
Include collaborative development of teaching materials;
contribute to set-up costs for the course in Addis Ababa;
In the longer term, students on the MSc in Geodesy would be funded in the same way as those on the existing MSc in Geophysics.
The same staff, knowledge and equipment would be able to provide short in-service professional training courses for staff from national mapping agencies.

Sustainability and Risks

This project is primarily about knowledge transfer. The success of a geodesy MSc programme at Addis Ababa University will be judged by the number and quality of the students it produces. The material taught will complement postgraduate teaching concentrating on remote sensing and GIS in Dar es Salaam and GPS and GIS in Kenya. The staff involved in teaching the new MSc have a proven teaching record – the Addis Ababa MSc in Geophysics already produces many very good students. Although the new course, once established, can be expected to be oversubscribed, the risks are largely related to an initial lack of resources: there might be too few students with suitable funding in the early stages to get a viable course off the ground. The start-up studentships the project will provide are designed to reduce the risk of initially having too few students for the structure to prove its value - agencies or individuals may not risk scarce resources to send students to an untried programme. Introducing a specialised Masters course whose concept and content will not be familiar to either students or funding agencies therefore needs a particular, but short-term level of support and encouragement.

In 2005 the University of Edinburgh established a collaborative network that involved research scientists from universities in Addis Ababa, Edinburgh and Copenhagen working together to develop a new technology for determining position and height. While the existing scientific network ensures that high level research collaboration and technological development continues, the EDULINK project seeks to ensure that the technology becomes understood and used at all levels of the target community. The new partner group will seek to:

Develop a geodesy MSc course in Addis Ababa as a trans-national regional centre;
Generate tailor-made teaching materials with specifically appropriate content for developing new-paradigm geodesy in East Africa, and
Set up short courses for continuous professional development.

The objective is to train all levels from field surveyors and government agency managers so that the new technology can be used for practical development projects in East Africa. The project responds to expressed national needs as well as international targets identified through the Economic Commission for Africa and the International Association of Geodesy.

The key aspect of the project is to harness the skills of young African research scientists from around the region in a collaborative scheme with the University of Edinburgh and their home universities to develop a world-class geodetic training facility in Addis Ababa. Sending students for postgraduate courses in Europe or North America is expensive and socially disruptive, particularly for professional employees participating in a life-long learning strategy. Because the area of training is very focused, it is efficient to develop initially a single specialised training facility locally, serving a large trans-national region.

Grant:

Project duration:

36 months

EU funding:

EUR 398,824.00

Total budget:

EUR 497,731.00

Project contact:

Dr. Roger Hipkin

University of Edinburgh

1-7 Roxburgh Street

Edinburgh EH8 9TA

United Kingdom

Tel: +44 131 650 9023

Email: roger.hipkin at ed.ac.uk

Project website:

Factsheet(s):

EN Geodesy in East Africa.pdf

Roger Hipkin

Sara White

Welcome to EDULINK

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… financed by the European Union and Implemented by the African, Caribbean and Pacific Group of States Secretariat, the programme supports cooperative projects between Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in the ACP Group of States, the EU Member States and other eligible countries. more about EDULINK...