You're listening to TED Talks Daily. I'm Elise Hugh. There are still so many parts of the world that are literally not on the map. That is, so rural that mapping technology hasn't reached it to plot the roads or geographical terrain. This can be dangerous for the people in these places, many of them in Africa.

In his 2020 talk to Wanda Kenea makes the case for prioritizing, accurate mapping in places that need it the most and why it is so important.

A few years back, my friend's dad asked me to show him my mom's house on the map.

I knew we didn't have street view in Zimbabwe yet, but I looked anyway, and of course, we couldn't

find it. When you look at most mapping platforms, you'll find that parts of the African continent

are largely missing.

And I've wondered, is it the people, is it the technology, or is it the terrain?

For nearly a billion people on the continent is an accepted reality that certain technologies

are just not built for us.

When Cyclone Idai flooded parts of Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Malawi in 2019,

killing 1,300 people and displacing hundreds of thousands of others,

it left more than just destruction.

It left a new awareness of the consequences of omission in the way we built technology. As rescue workers

arrived in the region in search of survivors, we learned that thousands of displaced people

were in unmapped areas, making it difficult to reach them with much-needed food and medical

supplies. There was no accurate accounting of what had been lost.

For those in unmapped areas, a natural disaster often means no one will come to find you.

Thankfully, as the tools used to build some of the maps we use today become more easily

accessible, we can be part of the maps we use today become more easily accessible,

we can be part of the solution.

Anyone with a computer or a cell phone can play a role in improving the representation of communities that are missing accurate maps.

In two weeks, I photographed 2,000 miles of Zimbabwe,

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