TomTom or other gps maps in Africa
 

Has anyone used these in their African travels?

We drove up from Sierra Leone to Germany in the spring using paper maps which are fine. The problem is my wife has a hard time reading maps and an even harder time driving in unfamiliar surroundings. That makes for difficult route finding when driving in the city. We got a TomTom in Germany and it worked great in Europe with good coverage almost everywhere. When we came to Canada we downloaded the North America maps (Canada, USA, Mexico) and they have been great as well. I'm considering getting the Africa map for when we return to Africa next spring. It looks good for Morocco but less so for further south.

TomTom Marocco is good, for South Africa you can use Navigon.

The "between" is not really well covered.

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ZvkAQx2nMJ.../s200/t4a2.jpg

Here i have listed some solutions:

Trans-Africa: Navigation - Karten für Afrika


Surfy

I really liked the maps of tracks4africa. They run on Garmin and even guidet me through Congo. They alsk know many campingplaces:
Ｍｏｔｏｒｒａｄ Abenteuer Reise 2 Jahre alleine durch Afrika "Transafrika"

Have a look around (this forum) for OSM maps.
Tracks4Africa and OSM maps can be loaded on a garmin navigation device, or install nroute 2.7.6 on a laptop with a gps receiver.

If using a laptop as a navigation device is an option for you (so not for bikers...:innocent:) this might get you started:

nroute installation

Tracks4africa has a very poor coverage between Mali and Namibia.

In comparison - the garmin worldmap - has to offer a lot more.

But in Namibia and Botswana in the Nationalparks - you will love T4A - you cant buy better maps there! Also the POI Database in the southern part, and too the road coverage - is big and good!

We had used Bing-Hybrid, togehter with T4A (tracks4Africa) - and the Garmin worldmap.

The "mix" between the different maps was ok :thumbup1:

But it depends on what you look for. T4A has at least the main-tracks covered - and is routable.

There is also an App available, for using it with your Smartphone / Tablet: 4x4tripping: Tracks4Africa T4A: neu auch als APP auf iOS (iPad, iPhone) /Android

Surfy

Well I got the TomTom maps for Africa. We'll see how that does. If it's not that great we still have our paper maps.

Sorry to tell you, but your choice is not ok, the map you have will cover no pistes at all and for the rest:


Full coverage:

Zuid-Afrika, Swaziland, Lesotho, Mauritius, Mayotte.

Main roads and main cities covered:

Nigeria, Marokko.

Only mainroads covered:

Angola, Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Congo, Democratische Republiek Congo, Gabon, Ghana, Kameroen, Kenia, Malawi, Mali, Mauritanië, Mozambique, Namibië, Niger, Réunion, Senegal, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda, Zambia en Zimbabwe.

So for the main part of Africa you have no usefull coverage becaus only mainroads is not usefull at all, becaus thats where you don't need your GPS.

Sorry for the Dutch tongue in the country names but I copied them from Tom Tom website.

GRTZ,

JP