Southern Mapping Commitment to the Principles of ASGISA

Southern Mapping Geospatial (SMG) the black owned South African arm of Southern Mapping Company celebrated its 1st anniversary in September 2011. Apart from commercial highlights such as the first full wavelength airborne hyperspectral campaign ever conducted in South Africa, over 20 local airborne Lidar surveys and GIS support for the South African SKA bid, SMG demonstrated its commitment to the principles defined in the Accelerated Shared Growth Initiative – South Africa (ASGISA).

SMGs commitment to developing scarce skills and high technology capacity has been demonstrated by its development of Geographic Information System (GIS) capacity in the Higher Education System. An internally funded pilot project saw the installation of free open source GIS software at Cosmo City High School with supporting lectures and training materials to support staff implementing the new GIS curriculum which is now part of the Geography syllabus nationally. By utilising innovative cost effective open source software SMG hopes to roll out a teacher training program nationally to allow necessary skills in the geo-informatics sector to be developed.

The increasing demand for Geo-informatics professionals in the company was demonstrated when Tebogo Senoge a lidar analyst with over 3 years of experience in the field entered the SMG fold. Apart from his duties which include Lidar image processing, Mr Senoge has been tasked with providing capacity development for Ms Ayanda Naphakade who SMG took on as an intern for 2011. Ms Nakaphade has recently completed her studies at UCT in Geo-informatics and represents a larger partnership between SMG and the department of Rural Development and Land Reform internship program which strives to allow young graduates the opportunity for work experience and further capacity development.

In addition to the above activities, SMG has provided advanced remote sensing courses at the University of Johannesburg and Pretoria and will soon add Fort Hare University to its portfolio of Industry/TEI technology support programs. The recently signed MOU with the University of Pretoria for the provision of open source GIS training will add significant impetus to this initiative.

Since our service offering is focussed on high end technology, (Satellite Remote Sensing, Airborne lidar, thermal and hyperspectral Imaging and GIS) SMG remains committed to education and skills development which will allow us to ultimately continue in our successes.