The Development of a Location Addressing System for Rural Villages in Botswana: Tlokweng Case Study

Abstract

Communities rely on location addressing for various purposes to optimize emergency response, services, and goods delivery. Without a well-designed location addressing system (LAS), governments and other service providers struggle to provide goods and services effectively and efficiently to local communities. Botswana has adopted a Land Administration Procedures, Capacity, and Systems (LAPCAS) project developed by a Swedish company to develop an effective and unique addressing system for the country. However, it has not solved the issue of location addressing in villages as the one being developed nationally has not been implemented yet. Botswana as a developing country needs a LAS to make it easy to identify and locate properties, and plan developments based on existing infrastructure. Technological advancements like Geographic Information Systems (GIS), Global Navigation and Satellite Systems (GNSS), and Web 2.0 have made it possible to develop location LAS to improve emergency response and service delivery in most Western countries. Thus, a prototype LAS was developed in this study using Python programming language, GeoPandas Framework, and Django web application to demonstrate its usefulness and potential benefits to a peri-urban village called Tlokweng in Botswana. The objective is to prove that geoinformation techniques can be used as foundations for addressing location identification and navigation challenges in rural areas of developing countries like Botswana.