Infrastructure Information

I was in a meeting with a client last week and it became apparent that a lot of information necessary for some construction work should be consolidated in one place so that it is easily available for interested parties. This is to avoid a situation like this one where a Chinese road construction company (do this guys have one road making machine they seem to be taking ages to fix Mombasa Road) cut Kenya Data Networks fibre optic cables.

With Kenya apparently the regional hub and Nairobi its economic hub, detailed maps of where fibre optic cables are laid will have to be put into a central repository like the University of Nairobi or one of the Ministries if the minions do not hold you hostage with a "lost" map. Nairobi currently has 4! fibre-optic cables ringing it! I do not know their locations. The maps should also have information about water pipes, drains, electrical lines, telephone lines (unfortunately becoming extinct though much more reliable than those wireless lines Telkom is pushing to consumers) etc. I do not trust The Nairobi City Council or the Ministry of Lands to keep any records especially after the suspicious fire in the Engineering Department office and the parrallel lands office title deed scam.

Information that should also be readily available are: the geological formation of Nairobi and its environs...actually every major city and town in Kenya, Civil Aviation map, Telecommunication "corridors" and future government plans like the bypasses etc. Detailed Nairobi maps can currently be obtained from Survey of Kenya, but you have to be vetted by Department of Defence! So we will have to do with shitty maps like this one or Google Maps.

With the undersea cable war on, its interesting to note that worldwide cable maps have already been updated to show the cables connecting the East African coast. Lets hope that SEACOM, TEAMS and EASSY become a reality by the end of next year.