São Tomé and Príncipe’s diplomatic switch from Taiwan to China has made all the headlines, but Taiwan’s “OpenStreetMap” community was quietly making inroads into this African island-nation.

By Chih-hsin Liu

Translated by Tammy Lan and Aaron Wytze

Just weeks after Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen’s historic phone call with US president-elect Donald J. Trump, the island-nation of São Tomé and Príncipe abruptly severed diplomatic relations with the Taiwan government.

As one of Taiwan’s last remaining allies to maintain full diplomatic relations with the Taiwan government, São Tomé’s decision to switch diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing so soon after the Tsai-Trump phone call had many in the media speculating on possible connections. The New York Times posited the move was orchestrated by the Chinese government to punish Tsai for trying to maneuver more international space for Taiwan.

But throughout the ordeal, this small African island-nation of only 200,000 people remained a mystery to the general public. For anyone looking to learn more about São Tomé and Príncipe from a website like Google Maps, would be disappointed by its lack of detail.

Surprisingly, São Tomé’s most complete map is available via a collaborative mapping project that is free and editable online, called “OpenStreetMap”. And the biggest contributor to São Tomé’s online map is also a most unlikely candidate: a Taiwanese alternate civilian service officer named Wei-hsiang Chan.

Wei-hsiang Chan introduces his OpenStreetMap project in São Tomé and Príncipe, at the 2016 g0v Summit

Alternate Civilian Service Officer by Day, OpenStreetMap-per by Night

Chan made his way to São Tomé and Príncipe as part of his mandatory conscription by the Taiwan military.

Because of China’s continued claim of sovereignty over Taiwan, and a number of military crises and conflicts in the Taiwan Strait since the Chinese Nationalists fled to Taiwan in 1949, Taiwan’s armed forces have enforced military conscription for all males on the island for nearly 70 years. For conscientious objectors or those with health issues who do not or cannot enlist in national military service, there are a number of non-military options, including working at an assigned government institution.

Chan chose the alternative civilian service’s diplomacy channel, and pursued his university specialist interests’ in public health. In November 2012, Chan joined Taiwan’s malaria prevention and treatment advisory group in São Tomé and Príncipe, where a team of Taiwanese health professionals were carrying our prevention and treatment work in the country for a number of years.

“When I first joined the team, the rate of Malaria infection had already gone down quite a lot. The advisory team worked really hard,” said Chan in an interview with g0v.news. During Taiwan’s 20-year presence in São Tomé, the rate of malaria infection had dropped by nearly 50%. “But it’s extremely difficult to get the rate of infection down from 5 or 6% to 1%,” adds Chan.

In order to continue suppressing the rate of malaria infection, Chan was responsible for investigating malaria breeding grounds, which included discovering the growth of mosquito larvae, creating a census history on malaria infection for each household, and then rectifying the environment and prescribing medicine.

But the lack of an accurate and recent map of the country became a major obstacle to his work. “When we first started, we only had a tourist map,” said Chan. Even when locals wanted to report their addresses to Chan, there were often no street names or signs to use. Most people would give a description about their home’s location, like “past the big tree, and the house to the right of the big rock.”

Chan and his team followed the tourist map along the main roads, then set off on foot to fill in the rest of the blanks on the map.

Everyday, Chan would accompany three local people from São Tomé, and recorded everything as he trekked the country. They would then put all of the daily recorded data onto a map at headquarters. An experience Chan describes as “imprecise” at best.

Because accurate data is necessary for effective treatment and prevention, Chan and his team needed data for each district, and each household. Painstaking detail was needed to keep track of mosquito breeding grounds, with even the interval gaps between homes needing to be recorded.

Chan’s work finally turned a corner when a classmate introduced the OpenStreetMap platform to him.

OpenStreetMap is a free and open source global map platform, launched by Steve Coast in 2004. Using a collaborative wiki-like authoring system with open-licensing and formatting, OpenStreetMap allows anyone to contribute. Because its easy to use, and easy to add new content, OpenStreetMap has become correspondingly rich and detailed. Map sources may come from GPS devices, aerial maps, free content, or even from a contributor’s local knowledge of a particular place. OpenStreetMap content is licensed under Open Database License (ODbL) rights, and can be used for everyday use, for navigation, academic use, and even for commercial applications.

With the help of online teaching programs, advice from National Taiwan University professor Tsai Kun-hsien, and the blessing of the Taiwan malaria prevention team, Chan began to learn how to put the data he collected into the OpenStreetMap platform. Slowly but surely, blank spaces on the São Tomé and Príncipe map began to be filled in.

Chan slowly began to feel like he was making a contribution to the team.

“I just felt like, I’ve come so far, and have gone to so many places in São Tomé and Príncipe. I need to record it all. I need to let the next person who comes after me have something valuable to use,” said Chan. “Otherwise, it would be a shame that all my work went to waste, wouldn’t it”?

To date, many international NGOs depend on the data Chan entered into the OpenStreetMap platform as an aid tool for dispensing assistance.