Mozambique
Maps against mines in Mozambique

afrol News, 30 November - While mines seriously prevent the economic recovery of rural Mozambique, new technology is being used to fight the civil war leftover. The Canadian development agency CIDA is supporting a high-tech mapping service of Mozambican mines.

Mozambique is one of the most heavily mined countries in the world. Known as the "silent killer", mines are found everywhere. Up to one million land mines are scattered throughout the country, posing a major threat to agriculture, transportation, and the safety of rural families, according to CIDA. Farmers cannot work in fields where every footstep brings the potential for death. 

Intélec Géomatique, a firm based in Quebec, Canada, is going to help Mozambique create a toponymic database (a system for tracking the evolution of place names) and a 1:50,000 raster maps database (a raster map is an image created by scanning a paper map using a high resolution scanner). 

- These databases will help the Direccao Nacional de Geografia e Cadastro (DINAGECA) to provide geospatial information to the agencies involved in demining in Mozambique, the demining community cannot properly plan and carry out their work without this information, CIDA reports.

Approximately 1,200 map sheets at a scale of 1:50,000 are required to cover the entire country. A scale of 1:50,000 will show things like schools, churches, railroad tracks, power lines, health centres, fences, vegetation, and small roads. 

- All of these landmarks are critical to situating minefields, especially in the countryside, CIDA reports. Most of the existing maps are out of date - they were compiled over 30 years ago. "The maps need to be redone to show current information about the landscape, which changed tremendously during the civil war." 

Intélec Géomatique will receive Canadian $ 817,000 for mapping and toponymy as part of CIDA's mine action activities in Mozambique. Natural Resources Canada - through Geomatics Canada - is overseeing the CIDA-funded project, the agency informs.

According to official figures, two million mines were planted in Mozambique over 13 years of civil war which ended in 1992. Now, the mine problem in Mozambique is varied, the victims always being innocent civilians; farmers cultivating their fields; children playing on the ground; people walking along tracks, etc. Mine victims are still mutilated or killed all over the country at a large scale. 

Sources: Based on CIDA and afrol archives

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