Mapping the unmapped: how we charted 1,200 trotro stops

When you open Google Maps in Accra and ask for directions to Madina, it draws you a road. A clean blue line down the N4. What it does not show you is the trotro that leaves Circle every four minutes, the mate hanging off the door shouting the route, the junction where you change for Adenta.

We spent six months riding. Not surveying — riding. With phones in pockets, GPS on, notebooks in hand. We rode every spine and every spur until the network stopped surprising us.

What we learned is that the city is not unmapped. It is mapped beautifully — in the heads of drivers, mates, traders, and the woman who sells PK at the lorry park. Our job was never to invent the map. It was to write down what already exists.

1,200 stops later, we have the bones of a system. The next thousand will come faster, because the people who know the routes are now sending them in.