Softening the blow

In absence of a robust forecasting infrastructure, mobile phones can improve climate resilience of African farmers

- TARUN GOPALAKRISHNAN

NO CONTINENT will be struck as severely by climate change as Africa, estimates the UN Environment Programme. This will definitely wreak havoc in the lives of farmers who depend on rainfall for agriculture. To adjust to the new climate reality, farmers urgently need a reliable and regular weather information service.

Recent estimates indicate that Africa has less than 2,000 AWSs, with less than a quarter of those meeting the World Meteorological Organization’s (WMO) technical requirements. On an average, one AWS in Africa covers 27,000 sq km.

The problem is that the distribution of weather stations across the continent is too uneven to have the required impact. While South Africa, spanning 1.2 million sq km, has the lion’s share of the weather station network in Africa, it is almost non-existent in subSaharan Africa. South Africa, the southern most country in the continent, has 550 automatic weather stations (AWSs), apart from 2,000 manually operated rainfall gauges.

WMO considers that generating reliable climate services requires eight times the stations currently available—that means 12,000 new stations across Africa. For this, the World Bank estimates an additional investment of US $1 billion, and $400-500 million per year for staff, operations and maintenance.

Peter Johnson, climate scientist at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, points at the trend over the past decade which shows a shrinking number of reliable weather stations. Apart from the upfront cost of $1,000, the maintenance cost of an AWS is high— two or three times the upfront cost. “Also, there is the menace of vandalism which must be considered,” he says.