In rural West Africa land rights are poorly documented and difficult to protect. This leads to conflicts when for instance companies find interest in a given piece of land. The losers of these conflicts are most often women and the poorer population who become victims of land loss and seizure.
Drones are excellent at conducting mapping tasks. And in an upcoming project, drones will be used for mapping the land as a first step towards securing land rights for the farmers. The detailed maps from drones will enable the population to document their piece of land.
Assistant Professor Elzbieta Pastucha is a photogrammetry expert from SDU UAS Center and, together with Associate Professor Dylan Cawthorne, she will contribute to the land rights project by advising and instructing in the use of drones and data-handling for mapping in Sierra Leone.
The project will be initiated using off-the-shelves drones, but the long-term plan is to develop a low-cost locally manufactured and recycled African Drone that can be used for the mapping.