THE SNOOCODE STORY
Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, the current Vice President of Ghana, speaking at an Economics Conference held at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) identified the problem of a non-existent Property Addressing System (PAS) as one of the hindrances of national development. While the government is making strides to implement a PAS, a local entrepreneur has invented an app that provides a unique geolocation based code to any place in the nation, making it possible to accurately locate a place to within seven meters. The app is called SnooCODE. SnooCODE’s vision is “An address for every man,woman and child”. On Valentine’s day of this year, the release of the iOS version of this app, already launched and operating on android systems, was announced.
The app was produced by a Ghanaian tech company called tinyDavid and is completely free to download. It can be used to solve logistic issues, eCommerce problems and even tracking the outbreak of disease by solving the PAS problem.
In 2015, SnooCODE partnered with the Ghana Ambulance Service (GNAS) and the Vodafone Foundation to create a variant of SnooCODE, SnooCODE RED, to speed up the process of identifying and reaching a location. By so doing, SnooCODE RED was able to lead to increased speed of emergency response times. SnooCODE RED is being used by the GNAS in both Accra and Kumasi and is set to roll out to other regional capitals throughout this year.
The introduction of the iOS compatible version of SnooCODE means the service can reach out to other communities and serve other purposes in addition. Mailing services such as DHL and FEDEX within the country, for example, could greatly benefit from the services of the app.
In addition, SnooCODE RED (the special version rolled out for GNAS) will be further extended this year. tinyDavid plans to collaborate with biomedical engineers from Oxford University to create a portable medical device toolbox that can be used to reach communities that have difficulty accessing medical services because of their secluded locations.
The app is available for download in both the Google Play and the Apple stores. For more information on SnooCODE, visit their website: www.snoocode.com.
