The Global Geospatial Data Infrastructure and Africa GIS Conference opened in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia on Monday.

The theme of the event is titled as "Spatial Enablement in Support of Economic Development and Poverty Reduction".

Ethiopia's Finance and Economic Development State Minister Abreham Tekeste on the event said, Africa need to devise and implement inclusive, accelerated and sustainable development strategy to address the multifaceted challenges it faced.

He said the continent must effectively utilize geospatial technology in a bid to address challenges related to poverty, unemployment, climate change, land degradation, water scarcity and shortage of energy.

Participants of the conference will discuss on the importance of geospatial science and technology in the production of affordable geospatial data sets for sustainable development in Africa.

Policy-makers, individual, representatives of governmental and non-governmental organizations, academic and research institutions are attending the the five-day conference.

Source: Ethiopian News Agency