GIS & Remote Sensing with QGIS

Course Overview

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and Remote Sensing are transforming how Africa understands and addresses its development challenges — from mapping disease outbreaks to monitoring environmental change. QGIS is the leading free and open-source GIS platform.

This 5-day course provides a comprehensive, practical introduction to GIS and Remote Sensing using QGIS. You will learn to work with vector and raster data, produce publication-quality thematic maps, perform spatial analysis, and interpret satellite imagery.

All exercises use real African spatial datasets — making the training immediately relevant to the contexts you work in.

What You Will Learn

• Understand GIS fundamentals: coordinate systems, projections, and spatial data types
• Navigate QGIS interface and manage layers, plugins, and project settings
• Work with vector data: create, edit, and query points, lines, and polygons
• Work with raster data: digital elevation models, satellite imagery, and land cover
• Import and join tabular data with spatial layers for thematic mapping
• Perform spatial analysis: buffer, clip, intersect, dissolve, and spatial queries
• Create professional maps with legends, scale bars, north arrows, and layouts
• Download and process freely available satellite imagery (Landsat, Sentinel)
• Perform basic remote sensing: NDVI calculation and land cover change detection
• Conduct spatial data collection using GPS and mobile field apps
• Export maps to PDF and image formats for reports and publications

Who Should Enroll

• Public health professionals mapping disease burden and health facility coverage
• Environmental scientists and natural resource managers
• Urban planners, infrastructure engineers, and development workers
• M&E officers wanting to add spatial dimensions to program monitoring
• Agricultural extension workers and food security professionals
• Researchers in geography, environmental science, or development studies

Requirements

• •No prior GIS or QGIS experience required
• •Basic computer literacy and comfort with file management
• •Laptop with QGIS installed (free download from qgis.org)
• •Curiosity about maps, spatial data, and geography