Tawanda Kanhema (born ) is a Zimbabwean photographer and product manager. He helped map 500 miles of Zimbabwe for

Google Street View Google Street View is a technology featured in Google Maps and Google Earth that provides interactive panoramas from positions along many streets in the world. It was launched in 2007 in several cities in the United States, and has since expa ...

as a volunteer.

Early life and education

Tawanda Kanhema is from the city of

Salisbury, Zimbabwe Harare ( ), formerly Salisbury, is the capital and largest city of Zimbabwe. The city proper has an area of , a population of 1,849,600 as of the 2022 census and an estimated 2,487,209 people in its metropolitan province. The city is situat ...

. He studied documentary film-making and journalism at

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...

Career

As of 2019, Kanhema was a product manager in

Silicon Valley Silicon Valley is a region in Northern California that is a global center for high technology and innovation. Located in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, it corresponds roughly to the geographical area of the Santa Clara Valley ...

. In 2009, he noticed that Zimbabwe was not represented on

. He subsequently volunteered to carry the Street View gear across of Zimbabwe so that it would be more complete and representative. He captured images in Zimbabwe via helicopter, speedboat, bicycling, car, and hiking. Ultimately, about of his travels across the country were uploaded to the Street View platform. Kanhema acted as a volunteer for Google for this project, spending US$5,000 of his own money to travel and take the pictures for Street View. In March 2019, he was paid by the

Mushkegowuk Council Mushkegowuk Council (pointed: ᐅᒪᐡᑫᑯ ᐅᑭᒫᐎᐎᐣ (''omashkeko okimāwiwin''); unpointed: ᐅᒪᐡᑫᑯ ᐅᑭᒪᐎᐎᐣ), or officially as the Mushkegowuk Tribal Council, is a non-profit regional chiefs' council representing C ...

of northern Ontario to document the

ice road An ice road or ice bridge is a human-made structure that runs on a frozen water surface (a river, a lake or a sea water expanse).Masterson, D. and Løset, S., 2011, ISO 19906: Bearing capacity of ice and ice roads, Proceedings of the 21st Int ...

s connecting their villages for Street View. Kanhema views his efforts as part of a wider effort to make Zimbabwe more attractive and accessible to tourists, and to improve geospatial data availability and quality in the region.

Personal life

In 2009, Kanhema moved from Zimbabwe to the US. He lived in

Berkeley, California Berkeley ( ) is a city on the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay in northern Alameda County, California, United States. It is named after the 18th-century Anglo-Irish bishop and philosopher George Berkeley. It borders the cities of Oakland, Cali ...

as of 2019.

External links

TED Speaker Biography

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kanhema, Tawanda 1980s births People from Harare University of California, Berkeley alumni Zimbabwean emigrants to the United States Living people