Tanzanian elections on the Web 

Presidential, parliamentary and local elections are to be held in Tanzania on 14 December 2005, and for the first time in the country's history it will be possible to follow on the Internet as the votes are counted in the presidential and parliamentary elections.

"Counting the votes in this election will take at least four days, and during this time the website with the WEB GIS system will make it possible to follow the results as the votes are counted. When the election is over and the results announced, it will also be possible to find information about the constituencies and candidates, or to search under different topics, such as which party had most votes in each constituency," says Project Manager Peter Ritzau Eigaard, from COWI.

The WEB GIS (Geographic Information System) is based on Open Source GIS technology, and it links the administrative and geographical data delineating constituencies with the data on numbers and the distribution of votes.

Results on the big screen

The website's primary target groups are the international communities and the five per cent of the population who have access to the Internet.

In addition, the continual updates will be shown on a big screen in the assembly point for the media, an "announcement centre" in Dar es Salaam.

Training and practical instruction

In parallel with the work on the new website, COWI will be training and instructing the local staff of the Tanzanian National Electoral Commission (NEC) in how to set up a GIS unit, which at present is manned by four operators.

"The staff at the office must be able to carry on themselves after we have stopped working on the project, so that is what we are teaching them," says Mr Eigaard.

This is an aid project financed by a number of donor countries including Denmark, and UNDP has been requested to administer the funds for NEC.

Future assignments

In the future the GIS office will be assigned the task of maintaining Tanzanian administrative boundaries associated with elections and subsequently informing the population of the details and results.

In the long term it will also be possible to use GIS as an analytical tool, for instance to reorganise the various constituencies so that they include equal numbers of votes.

By: Line Steenberg, jaje@cowi.com 
Published: 06. 12.2005