South Africa

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Complete Guide to Waze in South Africa (Under Development)

Thank you for your interest in improving the roads in South Africa. To get started, make sure you are up to speed with the basics of how to use the cartouche. Editing is a time consuming activity, so it can be handy to learn the shortcut keys.

Before you being, please read the information about Google aerial images and the use of Googze (i.e. don't use it!). Consulting a map book or looking up the name of the road should be ok, but do not trace roads from Google maps or Google aerial images. In areas which have been gated off I have found that Google is not correct anyway.

Choosing the correct road type



Freeway: Freeways are free flowing roads with no stop streets or traffic lights. These are generally your national roads (N1, N2, N3 ...) or motorways (M1, M2 ...). Major Highway: These are roads with a few stops or traffic lights. They are generally alternate routes leading from one major city to another that go through the center of smaller towns. They are generally regional roads (R roads) (R21, R23, R24, R29) with few stops and multiple lanes.



Ramps are used to map entrances and exits to highways. It is important that you do not use ramps to map slip roads/interchanges between any other roads as this may confuse the client in future versions.

Primary Street

These are roads that are not highways and are heavily used. Examples in Johannesburg would be Rivonia Road, Bowling Avenue and South Road in Sandton. Jan Smuts, Rissik and Empire in town.

Service Road

These are roads that run alongside freeways and highways that allow access for emergency vehicles. I have not seen an example of such in South Africa as we generally have a hard shoulder which is used for this purpose.

Dirt Roads/4x4 Trails

Self explanatory. Any road that is non-tarred and non-paved can be considered a dirt road.

Parking Lot Road

Self explanatory. Use this type of road to map out parking lots to shopping centers etc. It is not necessary to map every single lane of the parking lot, just the general exits/entrances.

Private Road

These are roads that are not drivable by the general public. i.e. you need special permission to access these roads. An example would be the roads inside a complex (think Dainfern in Fourways or the Equestrian estate in Woodmead.



Non drivable road

Do not use these categories. They are unnecessary

Naming the road

Here the more information you can provide, the better. This allows for easier searching and quicker identification of turns. Always write out the suffix in full, i.e. Road instead of rd, Highway instead of Hwy, Avenue instead of Ave.

Freeways and motorways


Major and minor highways


Primary Roads

Most primary roads will have a name that everyone recognises and a number that not many do. For example, Bowling Avenue is the M85. The naming scheme should be the name followed by the number in brackets, i.e. Bowling Avenue (M85) or Commissioner Street (R24)


Normal streets generally just have a name. If the street is a number, it is acceptable to use the number instead of writing it out, i.e. 1st Street, 2nd Avenue.

Naming the City

Province: Gauteng
City: Johannesburg
Town: Sandton
Suburb: Morningside

Waze automatically stores the country, so this is unnecessary. However, the other three are all likely candidates when searching for an address. This is a problem as Waze only allows us to capture 1 entry under city. Wazers have got round this problem by capturing the suburb, city. So the above example would be Morningside, Johannesburg. This is the recommended method as just capturing the suburb can cause confusion with people who are not familiar with the area.

Splitting a road

Splitting a road is not advisable as this causes a lot of maintenance when intersections with the split road need to be created. Most of the time you will find that you can get away with aligning the geometry of the road to the center of the split roads, then select the "Separating Lane" option in the edit panel. If you drive close enough, Waze should route you on the correct road.

If, however, you find that GPS tracks are far off, or the client keeps putting you on a different road, then you have no choice but to split the road.

Tips for successful editing

  3. Do not delete roads! There is a problem with area managers not being notified of road deletions. There are also a lot of inactive area managers, so these roads will probably never be deleted. Rather edit the geometry and move them somewhere else. This saves you having to draw a new road anyway.
  8. Learn the shortcut keys. They make life a lot simpler!
  9. FAQ


    Final words

    Just have fun and happy wazing. Hope to see you on the roads soon!