Mapping the past to create a sustainable future

Since time immemorial, throughout Africa and other parts of the world, nomadic groups such as the Mbororo people of Lake Chad have drifted with the ebbs and flows of the seasons in search of food and water. Sadly, the devastating effects of a changing climate have brought this ancient practice to its knees. Tribes like the Mbororo are fighting for their lives.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the Sahel region of the Republic of Chad in North Central Africa. Lake Chad is a vital source of life in this landlocked country and three others, and more than 30-million people rely on it for water and sustenance. In only two generations, the people who live on and around it have watched in horror as drought has shrunk the lake to less than 5% of its original 25,000km².

Rolex Awards for Enterprise 2021 Laureate Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim is addressing this crisis head on through work that is on the cutting edge of contemporary academic and professional discourse: she is harnessing local knowledge that is thousands of years old to better the lives of communities that are being ravaged by climate change, and she is doing this by creating maps.

Maps are complex, politically and culturally charged documents that have played a part in defining identities for thousands of years. While maps and the ways they carve out land and borders have arguably been responsible for disputes and discord in many parts of the world, Ibrahim is cleverly turning this on its head. She is using them as tools of survival and conflict resolution. 

A small pilot project by Ibrahim in the Chadian city of Baïbokoum brought together local herders and women to collate information on the availability of springs, food sources and sacred places in an effort to assist local government in better managing these important resources. This valuable knowledge, passed down for generations over thousands of years, is combined with 3D map technology to create a resource that both settled farmers and nomadic people can use to avoid conflict with each other.