News#31 Capacity Building on CDR Use for Urban Transport Planning (May 2026)

Under the METRAP-Maputo Project, JICA supported a comprehensive, six-month training program (November 2025 – May 2026) on the use of Mobile Phone Data (Call Detail Records, or CDR) for urban transport planning in Greater Maputo. The weekly sessions aimed to strengthen the technical capacity of staff and interns at the National Communications Institute of Mozambique (INCM) to safely handle and interpret anonymized mobility data.

The training was conducted in an on-the-job training format under the guidance of JICA experts and instructors from LocationMind Inc., a startup spun off from the University of Tokyo, during which staff and interns actually wrote programs to analyze the data. The program covered a full range of workflows, from basic data processing to visualization and the estimation of origin-destination (OD) traffic volumes. Participants learned how to transform data into actionable insights for a mobility analysis dashboard designed to support policy discussions and operational decision-making. This combination of theory and practice demonstrated how data-driven analysis can enhance evidence-based planning.

This training program ensures that the technical skills necessary for data-driven urban mobility planning are deeply embedded within partner organizations. This represents a crucial step toward the sustainable operation and maintenance of the CDR dashboard by institutions across Mozambique.