[HOT] Addresses in Africa

[john whelan]

​There has been considerable talk about addressing schemes for areas that
do not have street names etc.  Three words etc.

In many parts of the western we use things called postcodes, certainly in
Canada and the UK.

In Canada a letter addressed to a house number with a postcode will get
delivered. A house number only occurs once within a postcode.

Postcodes have great value for statistical information.  Clusters of
illnesses etc.  So this is infrastructure work that the NGOs can build on.

An address scheme based on postcodes and house numbers can be expanded
later to include street and village names which gives some redundancy in
the address.

The Canadian Government is into Open Data and currently works with a number
of African countries.  I would suggest tapping their expertise with
postcodes and to start with one African country to see if we can draw up
postcodes on the OSM map.  For those areas that have had buildings mapped
the local “Post Office” could be involved in assigning house numbers.

Note to Kent just an idle thought that might get picked up.  I bcced you to
save publishing your email address to the world.

Cheerio John​
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