Sylvester Abumere, Olusegun Areola and Bola Ayeni
University of Ibadan, NIGERIA
A major problem facing the development of GIS in higher education in developing countries of tropical Africa is the lack of foreign exchange to purchase the necessary hardware and software. Yet another problem is that of equipment maintenance and the purchase of necessary spare parts and consumables once the systems are set up. The GIS Laboratory at the Department of Geography, University of Ibadan, Nigeria provides a model of how these problems can be overcome through well-articulated bilateral agreements and relationships between institutions in developing countries and those in developed countries. The laboratory has been set up and supported thus far through the Universities Development Linkages Program(UDLP) funded by the United States Agency for International Development(US AID). This Program(now discontinued since de-certification of Nigerian government by the USA) links four higher institutions in the state of Iowa, USA with four institutions based in southwestern Nigeria. The Iowa institutions comprise the University of Iowa, Iowa State University, University of Northern Iowa, and Des Moines Area Community College. The Nigerian institutions comprise the University of Ibadan, the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, the Nigerian Institute of Social and Economic Research and the Ibadan Polytechnic.
The establishment of the GIS Laboratory began with two full years of capacity building involving (1) awareness and training seminars locally to identify research priorities in the areas of spatial decision support systems and environmental monitoring and management and establish a need for GIS technology as a decision-making tool in a problem-solving environment; (2) training and refresher courses for local staff both locally and in the participating institutions in Iowa on hardware and software with a view to drawing up realistic configurations of both hardware and software and peripherals for the proposed GIS Laboratory - local staff had the opportunity to practise with various types of software and got briefings on the capabilities of individual systems and software; (3) the provision and adequate furnishing of laboratory space locally; followed by (4) actual purchase and installation of equipment. The choice of software is aimed at establishing a system that allows the integration of various software for both vector and raster data with import/export capability. This gives a full GIS capacity. The major installed software in this integrated system include ATLAS GIS, ArcCAD/AUTOCAD, IDRISI and ALEXANDER. Other software include MAPINFO, TRANSCAD, MAPTITUDE and ArcView.
The potential for research is enhanced by the continuing cooperation of the eight institutions and the wide spectrum of research interests they represent. In order to ensure effective utilization of the facilities, the laboratory has embarked on the training of post-graduate students most of whom are drawn from government agencies and corresponding institutions in the private sector. In an environment where awareness is still rather low this is considered important to the adoption and development of GIS in both government and non-governmental agencies in Nigeria.