afrimapr: R building blocks for mapping data in Africa

afrimapr is a one year project running in 2020 funded through the Wellcome Open Research Fund. afrimapr will create R building blocks and learning resources to make it easier to make data-driven maps in Africa. The created resources will be promoted in Africa and beyond to initiate a community of users and developers to maintain and improve them. The R building blocks will make it easier to perform spatial data management tasks that should be straightforward, but seldom are, including: summarising data by administrative regions of different levels; joining and displaying data referenced by administrative region names; access to environmental, socio-economic and health data and displaying data in static maps and interactive web applications. Components will be designed for ease of use to target new users of R. We will run workshops in Liverpool, Ethiopia, Malawi and South Africa trialing and promoting resources.