Tanzania Building Footprints with Structural Attributes and Swahili Names

Tanzania building footprints and metadata exported from OpenStreetMap by the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT) as of March 2026. The collection includes all geospatial features within the country tagged with building attributes, provided in multiple GIS-ready formats.

Use Cases

• Estimating urban density and vertical growth using the building:levels attribute
• Analyzing regional construction patterns through the building:materials field
• Navigational mapping and geocoding using addr:street and addr:housenumber columns

Strengths

• Available in five distinct formats including SHP, KML, and GeoPackage
• Includes localized Swahili nomenclature via the name:sw tag
• Provides structural metadata such as building:materials for annotated features

Limitations

• Crowdsourced data source leads to potential geographic bias toward urban centers
• Inconsistent attribute population where rural structures often lack address data

Provenance

Source

OpenStreetMap contributors via Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT)

Collection Method

Crowdsourced geospatial digitization and ground-level tagging

Time Range

Up to March 2026

Freshness

Updated as of March 2026.

Geography

Tanzania