Abstract
It has been more than twenty-five years since the World Bank published its comprehensive report on “Guidelines for Education and Training in Environmental Information Systems in Sub-Saharan Africa: Some Key Issues”. Since this report was published, there have been considerable improvements in the region on implementing many of the actions proposed in that report relating to education, training and technology transfer. This paper presents an update on some of the activities that have taken place since the report was published and provides details on the current situation in the region. The paper shows how organizations such as the African Association on Remote Sensing of Environment (AARSE), the International Society of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ISPRS), the European Association of Remote Sensing Companies (EARSC), the Group on Earth Observation (GEO), as well as several others have helped to increase the manpower resources in the region and strengthened the institutional capacity in the field of Geoinformatics, by means of capacity building, technology transfer, international cooperation and through the provision of internal African resources. After reviewing what has happened in the field of Geo-Informatics education and training, we focused on current initiatives taken and challenges in five Sub-Saharan countries namely, Ethiopia, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania and Zimbabwe. We reviewed GIS education and training in the private sector, government, information communications technology in higher education institutions, GIS application areas and challenges facing GIS education and training. The paper concludes that, change should involve education stakeholders such as students, teachers/instructors in all level of education. Sub-Saharan Africa countries should focus on improving the quality of the curriculum, strengthening international and regional cooperation by the means of exchange programmes to improve education and training in Geoinformatics.