Kirsty Hendersen is an accomplished explorer. She now has three African city maps to her name that are making foreigners settle in their new cities with ease. She is the brains behind Map of Kigali, Map of Addis and now Map of Kampala.
“Many cities of the world are well mapped, and often you’re given an excellent map on arrival at the airport. This isn’t the case with most African capital cities and I wanted to create quality maps aimed at new arrivals for the cities in the region that I know and loves.” Kirsty explains
According to Kirsty, capital cities of African countries have been neglected a bit by the world of mapmakers who focus on fun, tourist-oriented maps – something that she is working hard towards changing.
In 2010, she started Living in Kigali, a popular website in Rwanda that is fills a hole in online information about Kigali for both expats and tourists. The site is a one stop centre for all things Kigali and Rwanda in general. From there, she saw a need for a good map of her adopted city and she created The Map – Kigali, the first in what has become a series of maps in the region.
The map has almost all significant landmarks in the city. (Photo by Kirsty)
After the success of The Map – Kigali, she then turned to Ethiopia and did ground work to create a map of Addis Ababa. Ethiopia proved to be a very difficult place to do business, so the map wasn’t printed in as large numbers, but it was still a success and won a ‘Highly Commended’ award from the prestigious British Cartographic Society in 201.7
“The Map – Kampala is the third map (after Kigali and Addis Ababa) in what I hope will be a series of maps of African capital cities aimed at making life a little easier (and more fun!) for foreign residents, tourists, and even lifelong locals,” Kirsty explains.
The Kampala map took around a year and a half or work involving a baseline survey of the city, moving around the different corners of Kampala to get to know neighbourhoods and discover interesting places, asking the locals about key restaurants, lodges, tourist attractions, landmarks and learning about everything in the city that might be helpful to a new arrival or someone who wants to get to know Kampala a bit better.
“I’ve tried to make this map professional, user-friendly, fun, and super useful. It’s the map I wish I had when I arrived as confused a visitor many years ago.” She explains.
The map is sold at key shops around the city (Photo by Kirsty)
The map has hundreds of pieces of handy information crowd-sourced from all kinds of Kampala residents and researched in-depth. It aims to show a whole new side of Kampala including eating recommendations, information on what to do, tips for new arrivals, and anything that will give people the confidence to get out and explore the city in the hopes that visitors will venture beyond the usual expat and tourist hangouts.
“It’s printed on water- and tear-proof paper, so that that it doesn’t disintegrate in your hands as you wander around town. I hope that it’s clear that the map shares my passion for Kampala and I’ve put a lot of effort into making it a beautiful product worthy of a place on your wall,” Kirsty explains.
The map costs 30,000 UGX and is available in major bookshops, restaurants and coffee shops around town for example Endiro Coffee Shop, Bushpig, Prunes, Definition Africa, Aristoc, 22stars, Fang Fang Hotel, Design Hub, Explorers Hub and Kona
