Using data from cellphones to help Nairobi crack commuter stress


A collaboration between Kenyan and American universities has produced the first comprehensive public transport data for a micro minibus (matatu) system in Africa. Digital Matatus continues to collect and update data on matatu routes in Nairobi and is supporting projects elsewhere. The aim is to use technology and local partnerships to help planning as well as commuters use semi-informal transit networks more efficiently. Jacqueline M. Klopp, who put together the team, shares her insights

How is your project empowering communities and planners in Nairobi?

Good information about transport is critical for citizens in any place. It is unacceptable that this is ignored in many places in Africa. If people can’t even see their routes as routes and their system as a system, it gets harder to engage in conversations about improvements.


Transportation planning in so many cities is top down, a kind of tyranny of experts. This was well illustrated on one of the highway projects in Kenya where the bus stops that everyone uses were not catered for with terrible consequences. Mapping when done collaboratively, openly and with citizens can be a useful tool in improving transportation planning.

What is the biggest opportunity for crowd sourcing data in African cities?

The rapid expansion of cellphone use offers one of the biggest opportunities to collect critical data. In Nairobi, almost every adult has a phone, and increasingly these are smart phones. This means everybody can help generate data about the city including about its transportation system. They can do this in two main ways.

First, “digital exhaust” of the phone or the geo-location data that gets transmitted through calls can be helpful. This becomes part of big data that can be analysed to see how the city moves. In Abidjan, Orange released this data and IBM research used it to help optimise bus routes. But telecommunications companies often don’t like to make this data open, even when anonymised.



How can more cities get involved in the digital matatus project?


Digital Matatus has been providing informal support for a number of these cities. But we would like to scale this effort up, build better tools and provide a resource centre and network where groups in different cities can share and help each other.


All places are unique and create challenges. For example, in Nairobi routes are numbered but in many cities this is not the case. And the complexity and size of transport systems differ. Cape Town and Nairobi are about the same size as cities with around 3.5 million people. But Cape Town has over 600 routes while Nairobi has 138.

Teams in Accra and Maputo involve the city governments in mapping minibuses called trotros. In other cities, there is a standoffish approach by local government to transit mapping by citizens. So a lot of variation exists based on the political interests and institutions involved in the transit system, how the system is regulated and the strategy around mapping.

What are the challenges of mapping informal transit networks that may not even see themselves as networks?

There are a lot of technical challenges. These include, stops that are sometimes not marked or named. And routes may not have names or numbers and can vary. It takes many trips to understand some routes or to distinguish multiple routes which look like one.



What are the lessons learned from your project in Nairobi?





What needs to be done to make sure that data is updated?


