Sustainable Development Technology Canada (SDTC) has announced a funding partnership with, Ecopia Tech Corporation (Ecopia), to create the first comprehensive digital map of all of Sub-Saharan Africa.
This digital map will include an estimated 342 million buildings, 3.8 million linear kilometers of roads and 582 million hectares of forests.
Digital Maps are leveraged globally to improve societal well-being, economic efficiency, and monitor environmental health. Until now, Sub-Saharan Africa has been operating without consistent access to accurate information about their geography – resulting in inefficiencies and inaccuracies in decision making across the continent.
By creating the first comprehensive digital map of key features across all of Sub-Saharan Africa, this initiative will empower governments, NGOs and businesses to optimize their efforts on the ground, gaining insights like never before. This map will be used to optimize the distribution of vaccines, planning and deployment of renewable energy infrastructure, and monitoring and policing of deforestation.
SDTC will provide $6.7 million to support this initiative. Additional contributions from other supporting partners will be announced at a later date.
“This initiative will enable a wide range of global sustainability and humanitarian benefits, and demonstrate our commitment to helping businesses scale and compete on the global stage. SDTC is proud to invest in a company like Ecopia, using cutting edge technologies to advance sustainability efforts across the world.” says Leah Lawrence, President and CEO, Sustainable Development Technology Canada (SDTC)
Jon Lipinski, President & Co-Founder, Ecopia, on the other hand said, “This project will not only showcase Canadian technology on the world stage, but also stands to positively impact the lives of hundreds of millions – by empowering better data-driven decisions to be made surrounding the environment, economy, and societies of Africa. We are extremely excited to be part of this initiative, and are thankful to have gained the support of SDTC and the Canadian Federal Government.”
