Mubas hails the geospatial graduates
Malawi University of Business and Applied Sciences(MUBAS) says the country stands to benefit a lot from the cohort of the first ever geospatial experts which the institution has trained.
Vice Chancellor for the institution, Professor Nancy Chitera said this in Blantyre on Friday during the closing ceremony of the country’s first ever state of the map conference.
Chitera said over the past years the country has had no institution that used to train geospatial experts, a development which she said has been negatively affecting the mapping of some locations such as roads and towns.
” We therefore thought of introducing the geospatial mapping academic programs in our two new schools of built environment and engineering inorder to narrow down the gap,” she said
Chitera said the introduction of the programs at local level will make the country to save money which it used to either hire foreign experts or sending students outside the country for training.
Among others, the vice Chancellor said there was a need for the country to reflect on the growth of the geospatial mapping industry and the path towards fulfilling sustainable goals.
She said: ” As the country, we are proud of producing drones among other open data technologies. But have these helped the country so far to influence the sustainable development goals?
One of the PHD candidates in geospatial mapping, Paul Kalonde said he was impressed with the current growth of the geospatial mapping industry, saying it is helping to among others digital track the disasters and disease outbreaks.
Kalonde, who was also the conference organizing chairperson, said there was a need for the youth to be involved in the geospatial mapping industry.
” The country cannot achieve its Malawi 2063 agenda without the fully involvement of the youth. Therefore, this is one of the industries which the country can encourage the youth to participate,” he said
The country has been holding the first state of the map conference, where mappers converged to build a community, share tools and build networks.
Follow and Subscribe Nyasa TV :