The Committee on Development Information (CODI) is a unit within the UN Economic Commission for Africa, with three subcommittees on Statistics, Information Communication Technology, and Geo-Information. The first CODI meeting took place in 1999 and since then CODI meetings have incorporated the previously regular (1963 to 1996) UN Cartographic Conferences for Africa. CODI consists of member African nations along with ICA and other organisations as affiliate members. CODI meetings are held every second year at UN headquarters in Addis Ababa, the fourth meeting having been held in April 2005. After formal election of the presidium, (Dr Amna Hamid of Sudan was elected to chair the Geo-Information subcommittee) a number of meetings were held resulting in a range of important resolutions.

It was agreed that Geo-Information development, particularly Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDIs), needed to be integrated with wider initiatives, including National Information and Communication Infrastructures (NICIs), leading to an African Information Society Infrastructure (AISI). Those member states that have not yet started to develop SDIs and NICIs should adopt an integrated approach when developing their national e-strategies, whilst those member states that have already initiated SDIs and/or NICIs should ensure that links are created between the two, with strong co-ordinating mechanisms. An obvious requirement is that government and political institutions continue to allocate necessary resources to extend and maintain the mapping infrastructure, including geodetic framework and core datasets. ICA believes that its initiative on Mapping Africa for Africa (MAfA) creates a framework for such development. It recognises that up-to-date, relevant, standardised and integrated Geo-Information and statistical information are critical for sound decision-making and that there is currently a lack of programmatic approach to the collection, maintenance and dissemination of such information. It recognises that most of ‘info-structure’ content for Africa is the responsibility of member states and institutions and that the availability of National Administrative Divisions as a fundamental dataset is crucial for the analysis and management of socio-economic phenomena. Progress will be enhanced by the efforts of the Second Administrative Level Boundaries (SALB) project activated by the UN Geographic Working Group. This will act as a basic platform for the collection, management, visualisation and sharing of socio-economic data at sub-national level, and by further resolutions on effective address coding and earth observation in Africa.

On behalf of ICA, the present author gave a paper entitled ‘Maps and Geographic Information to Everyone Everywhere’. This offered a short summary of the work within the ICA and stressed the progress in standards within the field of Geo-Information and new developments in wireless communication. These may open up the possibility for deployment of data communication also in rural areas, at affordable cost.