As HOT Country Director, I was approached by National Geographic to co-conceive a feature about inventiveness, adaptiveness and self-sufficiency amongst the refugees of BidiBidi. One of my first questions to journalist Nina Strohlic was “Are you aware that refugee communities are actually creating a “Neo-City” or a “Thirdspace” (Edward Soja, Land-Theorist) by naming, describing, and depicting it as the local OpenStreetMap of their new homeland? Now that’s inventive…

Here’s lead cartographer describing the making of the feature which appeared in 2019 Spring Edition of National Geographic Magazine. HOT were subsequently invited to partner with the publication.

Uganda went on to become one of the most comprehensively mapped countries on OpenStreetMap, largely thanks to the initiative and adaptability of its refugee communities…