Africa Groundwater Atlas
Download the Africa Groundwater Atlas Country Hydrogeology Maps
Download digital, GIS-enabled maps, at a scale of 1:5 million, showing hydrogeology (aquifer type and productivity) and geology (with particular relevance to hydrogeology) for 43 countries in Africa.
- All country maps
- Algeria
- Angola
- Benin
- Botswana
- Burkina Faso
- Burundi
- Cameroon
- Chad
- Congo
- Cote d'Ivoire
- Central African Republic
- Djibouti
- Democratic Republic of the Congo
- Ethiopia
- Gabon
- Gambia
- Ghana
- Guinea
- Guinea Bissau
- Kenya
- Lesotho
- Liberia
- Madagascar
- Malawi
- Mali
- Mauritania
- Morocco
- Mozambique
- Niger
- Nigeria
- Rwanda
- Senegal
- Sierra Leone
- Somalia
- South Sudan
- Sudan
- Tanzania
- Togo
- Tunisia
- Uganda
- Western Sahara
- Zambia
- Zimbabwe
These are Version 1.0 of the map dataset. Maps for South Africa and Nambia are not available in this Atlas. Maps for a final five countries (Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, eSwatini and Libya) may be released in future.
The maps are provided as free-to-download shapefiles (.shp) – a digital vector storage format developed and regulated by ESRI. There is a single shapefile for each country, which contains attribute information for geology and hydrogeology. These files can be used in most geographic information systems (GIS). Some GIS software can be purchased (e.g. ArcMap from ESRI and MapInfo from Precisely); others are open source and free to use (e.g. QGIS). Pre-prepared map legends for geology and hydrogeology for each shapefile, as ESRI layer files, are also provided: in English and, for selected countries, French or Portuguese. These can only be used in ArcMap.
More information on the maps is available in the User Guide Version 1.2: Africa Groundwater Atlas Country Hydrogeology Maps. This is provided as a pdf download with each of the maps, or can be downloaded directly.
More information on the hydrogeology of each country for which a map is provided can be seen in the relevant Africa Groundwater Atlas country pages. If you have any problems, please email AfricaGWAtlas@bgs.ac.uk — we will be happy to help!
These maps were produced as part of the Africa Groundwater Atlas project, which was jointly funded by DFID, NERC and ESRC, supported by the International Association of Hydrogeologists (IAH), and carried out by the British Geological Survey (BGS) in partnership with hydrogeologists from across Africa. It was a part of the Unlocking the Potential of Groundwater for the Poor (UPGro) research programme, which focused on improving the evidence base around groundwater availability and management in sub-Saharan Africa, to enable the sustainable use of groundwater that benefits the poor.
The maps are released under a Creative Commons ‘Attribution/Share Alike’ (CC BY SA) licence. If sharing the maps or any adaptation of them, please give appropriate credit to the British Geological Survey/Africa Groundwater Atlas, indicating if you made any changes, and provide a link to the CC BY SA license.
UPGro was funded by
