Multi-Level Participatory GIS Framework to Assess Mobility Needs and Transport Barriers in Rural Areas: A Case Study of Rural Mumias East, a Sub-County of Kakamega, Kenya

In recent decades, there has been a growing interest in the application of GIS to community empowerment or new policy development through participatory design, information gathering and implementation. This study, therefore, aims to apply a multi-level participatory GIS (PGIS) framework to assess mobility needs and barriers in rural areas from different available transport modes. This assessment was applied to three sub-locations (Lusheya, Khaunga and Mahola) located in the sub-county of Mumias East, Kakamega, Kenya. The study brings two main contributions: (1) an overview of mobility needs and barriers in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) and (2) an introduction of a PGIS framework that integrates in-depth local knowledge of rural mobility needs and mobility barriers. This PGIS framework was applied to mobility issues based on three main dimensions: context, process and content. The context in the PGIS framework focuses on identifying the right stakeholders and putting on suitable structures for their training as well as the collection of data. The process considers the collection, analysis and visualization of rural mobility data. The content of the data collected are validated for accuracy in the form of maps and are evaluated for relevance by stakeholders. Local youths with GIS knowledge and digital tools were mobilized along with community people having a solid understanding of the local geographical contexts to collect geographically referenced data related to community resources, transport networks, and mobility barriers. The application of the multi-level PGIS framework has brought to the mainstream daily mobility challenges faced by rural communities in Sub-Saharan Africa. Community members, even those from remote areas, also have access to decision making, reversing the previous structure that strongly relied on often-irrelevant, top-down decision making.