Freetown Urban Data & Community Drone-Mapping Programme

Freetown, which generates roughly 30% of Sierra Leone's GDP on under 0.5% of its land and houses about 15% of the national population, runs a multi-phase civic-data programme feeding into Mayor Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr's 'Transform Freetown' plan (launched January 2019 across eleven priority sectors), led by Freetown City Council with the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team, Fourah Bay College and the World Bank/GFDRR.

Phase one (2018–2019), led by Fourah Bay College engineering students with Where Is My Transport and World Bank/GFDRR support, combined mobile-phone call-detail-record mobility data, road-condition surveys and poverty data to map Greater Freetown's bus network. In early 2024, Freetown City Council launched a community drone-mapping programme with the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team, CODOHSAPA/FEDURP and Slum Dwellers International, funded by Germany's BMZ, training residents (including pilots recruited from informal communities) to produce high-resolution aerial imagery.

Phase one produced the first map of Greater Freetown's 4,038 km of formal and informal bus network, revealing seasonal travel differences and confirming Tower Hill as the city's primary employment destination. The drone programme trained 30 residents, growing to a 28-member crew including 10 pilots from informal communities, producing 5cm-resolution imagery and elevation models at a reported 3–10x lower cost than traditional aerial survey. Outputs now feed municipal tasks including waste management, property taxation, ward-boundary review and informal-settlement recognition.