With several socio-economic activities ground to a halt by the Corona Virus (COVID-19) pandemic,  several governmental, non-governmental and intergovernmental are doubling up efforts to mitigate the disease from spreading further, especially through the use of space-based applications for effective monitoring the global health crisis.

In line with these efforts, the Regional Centre for Mapping of Development Resources (RCMRD), last week, announced the launch of its web application dedicated to monitoring the spread of Coronavirus across our 20 Member States with accurate and real-time statistics on the number of active cases, recovered cases and reported deaths.

The Centre is utilising data compiled from World Health Organization Daily Situation Report, thoroughly crosschecked and compared with the ones published the Health Ministries of each country before it is updated the application.

The aim for launching the application borders on providing the general public, policymakers and relevant agencies in these regions, access to accurate data to keep in touch with the situation around them, particularly, with the social distancing and lockdown of all activities and movement in most states; appreciate the growth of the crisis and understand the risk factors associated with the pandemic to act accordingly and make the necessary decisions needed to mitigate the further spread of the contagion.

The application also allows the general public to make contributions on how to improve the data curated by the application.

To access the application, kindly click here.

About the RCMRD

The Regional Centre for Mapping of Resources for Development is a non-profit intergovernmental organisation with expertise in surveying and mapping. Established in 1975, the organisation comprises of 20 member states from Eastern and Southern Africa, including Botswana, Burundi, Comoros, Ethiopia, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Mauritius, Namibia, Rwanda, Seychelles, Somali, South Africa, South Sudan, Sudan, Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
The organisation has been instrumental to the development of human capacities in the area of mapping, remote sense and its related fields on the continent, and has undertaken and completed several mapping projects in different countries. The Corona Web App is its most recent contribution to tackling socio-economic issues in Africa through mapping.