The Rwanda Metadata Portal: A Web Catalogue Service

The creation of a National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI) is of growing interest in Rwanda. The importance of NSDI in facilitating access to and use of geospatial data to support decision-making is recognised. Numerous government ministries and institutions in Rwanda produce geospatial datasets of different themes. It is challenging to know what datasets exist and how to access them. Since geospatial data is costly to produce, it is expedient to reuse data in different applications. Realizing that geospatial metadata are needed to properly manage and maximize data use, a metadata portal was developed. The aim is to ease the discovery of existing geospatial datasets on Rwanda. This paper describes the procedure utilised in compiling and creating metadata, presents an overview of the portal and discusses challenges faced in its development. The information will be particularly useful for those wanting to establish or already working on metadata in similar less economically developed context as ours.