Constraints oriented approaches in advancing spatial data infrastructure: case of Southern African Customs Union

Maphale, Lopang

Constraints oriented approaches in advancing spatial data infrastructure: case of Southern African Customs Union

Doctoral Thesis

2019

Abstract

Spatial data infrastructure (SDI) concept has made in-roads in a number of economies across the world, but Africa, on average is reported as lagging behind in implementation. This status has been confirmed through a number of continental SDI Assessments done in Africa. Africa SDI Assessments average its development as slow, which is problematic considering the fourth industrial revolution where; technology, communication, information and connectivity are the main enablers of political and socio-economic development. The problem of slow SDI development in Africa has acted as a catalyst for this study, with the five Southern African Customs Union (SACU) countries forming the scope for the investigations. This study focussed on investigating SACU countries SDIs and the associated sub-region with the aim of fostering on-going improvement. To do that, the prevailing SDI assessments in Africa were reviewed and utilised to propose a seven stepped constraint-oriented methodological approach as a means for guiding SDI development and progression within SACU. Management theories being; Theory of Constraints (TOC) and Due Diligence (DD) were utilised alongside the well-known SDI assessments of State of play (SoP) and Readiness Index (RI) to propose SDI On-Going Improvement Framework (SDIOGIF). This framework as suggested, has been enhanced using study data collected through documents, websites, workshops, interviews and questionnaires relating to SDIs within the SACU countries. Results from these instruments are revealing fundamental disparities in SDI implementations among study case countries, especially SDI aspects relating to legal frameworks and organisational setups. Some countries possess SDI legal frameworks and others don’t. In addition, these countries are found to base SDIs on varying institutional sectors such as; Surveying and Mapping (Geoinformation), Statistics, Environmental and Information Technology Agencies. Studying these countries’ SDIs, helped in establishing context-based constraints in their advancement. Through inductive reasoning, these constraints are aggregated as; macro-environment, organisation, legal, marketing, financial, management, informational and technology. They are designed into SDIOGIF, to guide country specific SDI improvements and their comparative analysis performed as a pre-cursor to establishing the proposed SACU Regional SDI which is currently non-existent.

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PhD / Doctoral

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