Recovery of FTM: plans of renewing base maps

The Malagasy Institute of Cartography and Hydrography, known as FTM, will soon acquire, with the support from the Ministry of Planning and Decentralization, new equipments and materials that meet international standards. The acquisition of new equipments is the witness the gradual recovery of the institute. No sustainable and harmonious development is indeed possible without the cartographic and hydrographic data. They are considered an important decision tool for the various development actors, namely infrastructure projects.

Sectors such as real estate, civil engineering, activities related to the exploitation of marine areas use these data. In order for these sectors to get reliable data, FTM intends to invest in equipments and long term projects. For the next three years, it will develop a strategy coordinating the production and dissemination of geographical information. It also needs to perform inventory and to renew, if necessary, geographical infrastructures such as boundaries and roads.

FTM will facilitate the population and other organizations’ access to geographical information. It will also strengthen the local and international partnerships and will improve its management system. As for its vision for the next five years, it consists, among others, of implementing the regulations on the production and dissemination of geographical information. The aim is to make the data reliable and to prevent their illegal dissemination.

Another challenge awaiting FTM concerns the production of data that better highlight the geographical and hydrographic boundaries, including the continental shelf for which the country has just requested an extension to the United Nations. For the next ten years, the institute intends to make geographical infrastructure a lever for development. In order to do this, FTM will reduce the production time of geographical data. The latest data have now 40 years. The scale of presentation should also be improved for more details and precision. In short, the CEO of FTM, Franck Razafindrabe, says that several efforts have so far been made and others are still on the preparation phase.