Mapping The Commons In Africa

Also available in: Français Français

In the coming months, three of the partners of Remix The Commons, LARTES, Communautique and VECAM, will initiate an experiment to formalize popular workshops for mapping the commons, develop tools and a free and open practice manual (FLOSS manual) for share this work with those who want the lead it in their own community.

Mapping Common in Africa (Cartographier les Communs en Afrique) is an initiative whose center of gravity is located in Senegal, between Saint Louis and Dakar. It is to design an ambitious and popular process of learning and empowering people on their commons. It mobilizes activists, intellectuals and researchers from different geographical and cultural backgrounds and disciplinary who share the ambition to rebuild commitment and citizen participation on public property.

Commons are goods or things that do not belong to anyone in particular, but whose use is common to all, and management established on a cooperative and democratic basis, ie it allows each to take part in the development of rules and decisions that affect himself.

Examine commons from the point of view of production of social and symbolic links, is questioning how men are all together human community and how by accident or necessity, they can show their capacity to know or not that they are trying to consolidate this link or to lose it, how they are able or not to build and take care of commons (Abdourahmane Seck).

Based on the experiences and issues specific to the African continent, the Commons Mapping Project in Africa is to develop methods of interpretation and representation, including mapping, of the issues relative to the commons, to systematize and to organize their mutual enrichment in an open and collaborative base for the purpose of empowering people.

This project will contribute to the networking of commoners in Africa, and to strengthen their interaction with the rest of the world, through the sharing of visions and practices and the contribution to the development of methods and tools for mapping the commons.

Folow this work (in French) in the wiki of Remix The Commons and read more in the French version of this post.