WISER Africa

Its mission is to support communities and individuals in Africa who are disproportionately affected by extreme weather, seasonal variations, and the impacts of climate change. To achieve this vision, WISER Africa aims to increase the uptake and use of co-produced weather and climate information services, to support decision making at local, national, and regional levels.  

Programme objectives:    

• Build on the transformational change delivered through WISER to date and provide the opportunity to innovate and expand into new areas and partnerships, while drawing on previous lessons and best practice.  

• Focus on mainstreaming weather and climate information services into policy, planning and decision making to ensure improvements are both effective and sustainable.   

• Promote Gender Equity and Social Inclusion (GESI) by ensuring the needs of all community members, especially those that are most vulnerable, are recognized and addressed. 

WISER Africa will benefit over 15 million vulnerable people to become more resilient to weather and climate changes, and will take the form of national, regional and pan-regional engagement with a wide range of stakeholders engaged in weather and climate activities at all levels.  

In 2024, during COP29, an additional £30+ million investment was announced by FCDO, bringing the total funding for WISER Africa to an extraordinary £46.8 million since its launch in 2022—an investment that will significantly amplify the programme’s impact across the continent. This enables the programme to scale its work, integrate future climate projections, and collaborate with regional, national and local partners for sustainable, long-term solutions.

Contents

• Where does WISER Africa work? 

• WISER Africa delivery mechanisms

  • Core grant-funded projects 

  • Small grants 

  • Regional projects 

• Completed projects 

  • East Africa

  • West Africa 

  • Southern Africa 

Where does WISER Africa work? 

WISER Africa has expanded from previously working in East Africa and the Sahel, to now operating across East, West and Southern Africa. The adoption of the regional approach will maximise regional cross-learning and collaboration, whilst supporting concepts that are locally relevant.  

The focus in East Africa is building on the success of the activities that were undertaken previously in WISER and covers countries across the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD)/East African Community (EAC) region 

Activities in West Africa are focused on improving seasonal forecasting processes and products for food security, and creating an improved environment for their future development, uptake and use.

In Southern Africa, WISER’s focus has been to introduce regional activities and raise the profile of WISER projects with key stakeholders. 

WISER Africa delivery mechanisms 

WISER Africa focuses on three key delivery mechanisms to support impactful projects across the continent across different levels.

Core grant-funded projects 

In 2022, WISER Africa launched an open call for proposals, resulting in several projects that are now in the implementation phase. These initiatives are pivotal to our mission. 

DARAJA

DARAJA, led by Resurgence, which aims to improve access to, and understanding of, weather and climate information for over a 12 million under-served people in urban areas of East Africa. Its work focuses particularly on informal settlements, including the provision of early warning services for extreme weather. It works in Uganda, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania and Sudan. 

Enhancing Climate Change Resilience in East Africa (ECREA)

The ECREA project led by CIAT, aims to improve resilience of people and adaptive capacity of East African countries. It facilitates access to and use of timely co-produced weather and climate information services (WCIS) and Impact-Based Early Warning Systems. It also supports National Research Systems to deliver improved, tailored AgroClimate Advisory services to the bean sector using a multi-country approach. It works in Rwanda, Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania.  

Clima-Social

Clima-Social project led by the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre, which aims to promote climate resilience in the Sahel by improving the use and coordination of weather and climate information services between social protection and climate stakeholders. It works in West Africa, specifically in Burkina Faso and Mauritania. 

ResAlert

ResAlert project led by Practical Action aims to strengthen community resilience to floods through integrated early warning systems primarily in West Africa in Senegal and Niger with smaller activities in Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali and Mauritania. 

Sahel MauSen

The Sahel MauSen project led by the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) aims to support activities in West Africa in Senegal and Mauritania by reviewing and updating the National Framework for Climate Services (NFCS) alongside enabling other key activities highlighted by National Meteorological and Hydrological Services such as Quality Management System training and setting up an agro-meteorological database.  

Early Warning for Southern Africa (EWSA)

WISER’s Early Warning for Southern Africa (EWSA) project led by the University of Leeds seeks to improve access to early weather warning systems for people and communities disproportionately impacted by extreme weather, seasonal events and climate change. As part of this work, they have provided training workshops on nowcasting for forecasters in South Africa, Zambia, and Mozambique.  

Small grants 

The small grants mechanism is a series of pots of funding that organisations can bid for to enable innovative new ideas and / or research to be implemented. Its aim is to be agile and to support and complement the work of both the core grants and the regional projects. 

Throughout the programme, we will continue to host multiple open calls for proposals, with a focus on small-scale pilots and innovative concepts. This mechanism is designed to empower smaller national partners, enabling them to propose and implement impactful initiatives.  

WISER Kenya

A national project, WISER Kenya (East Africa), led by the IGAD International Climate Prediction and Application Centre (ICPAC)  aims to build the resilience and adaptive capacity of Kenyan people to the effects of extreme weather, seasonal events and longer-term climate change through improved access to and use of reliable early warning services in Garissa and Tana River Counties of Kenya.  

Tanzania (East Africa)

There is a Tanzania (East Africa) Small Grant Project managed by CCI (The Centre for Community Initiatives) who are organising  a National Climate Outlook Forum, running seasonal forecasts training and delivering one expert meeting. This will enhance generation and dissemination of seasonal weather forecasts and increase accessibility to weather and climate information. 

Regional projects 

Co-designed with regional partners, these projects address key priorities identified by communities across West, East, and Southern Africa. Building upon lessons identified in the previous phases of WISER, this delivery mechanism is very much regionally led and will run through the remainder of the WISER Africa programme. As such, they will be implemented in close collaboration with regional, national, and local stakeholders. 

Completed projects 

East Africa

ICPAC regional projects

ICPAC led regional projects that increased capabilities within the National Meteorological and Hydrological Services (NMHS) in the IGAD/EAC region by supporting activities such as Greater Horn of Africa Climate Outlook Forums (GHACOFs) and providing expert foundational training. Through these WISER projects, NMHS forecasters acquired skills on how to analyse climate model output and downscale forecasts for the region and their countries using post-processing facilities developed by ICPAC. They also generated tailored climate information products, including the national and regional seasonal forecasts, probability of exceedance, standardized precipitation index, and intra-seasonal characteristics (e.g., rainy season onset). 

CAPEX projects in Kenya, Tanzania and Rwanda

The Kenya Meteorological Department (KMD), Rwanda Metorological Association (RMA) and Tanzania Meteorological Association (TMA) have also delivered three CAPEX projects  which have increased in-country capacity of National Meteorological and Hydrological Services to produce weather and climate information services through procurement of key equipment.  

• The Tanzania CAPEX project procured and installed two automatic weather stations to enhance agrometeorological observations in Tanga and Bukoba districts.
• The Kenya CAPTEX project had two outcomes: to procure and install an automatic tidal station a Mombasa Port and an automatic weather station at Pwani. The project improved the validation of marine forecasts, for both shipping and inshore waters, to grant forecasters greater confidence to provide more detail for the wind speed and sea state forecasts currently provided.
• The Rwanda Capex project successfully installed Network Attached Storage (NAS) at the RMA's headquarters. This comprehensive system ensures continuous data availability and network based access for various users, marking a significant advancement in Rwanda's meteorological infrastructure and capabilities for effective data handling. It facilitates seamless collection, processing, storage, and dissemination of meteorological data from various sources, ensuring availability and accessibility of critical information. 

West Africa 

Mali Mateo

The Mali Meteo project enhanced the news and media integration of weather and climate information services (WCIS) in Mali by strengthening 50 journalists’ skills in understanding, interpreting and communicating WCIS which helped enable them to translate WCI into understandable media content.   

Niger Met

The Niger Met project gave 39 rural producers, community radio hosts, and agricultural and livestock technicians from various regions of Niger training about the use of weather and climate information services for decision-making in the planning of agropastoral campaign activities. This facilitated decision-making processes and the adoption of best practices. 

AGRHYMET

The AGRHYMET project strengthened the PRESASS forum by running two training sessions for the National Meteorological and Hydrological Services in-region on seasonal climate and hydrological forecasting. 

Southern Africa 

South African Weather Service (SAWS) regional projects

South African Weather Service (SAWS) delivered regional projects that supported the delivery of the Severe Weather Forecasting Programme (SWFP) through the Regional Sub Programme Management Team (RSMT) workshop. In addition, they undertook  community outreach activities, ran impact-based forecasting training for National Meteorological and Hydrological Services as well as a stakeholder collaboration workshop in-region. Laptops were also provided to enable SAWS to host and deliver enhanced forecasting training to the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) region through provision of improved technology.  

Southern African Development Community Climate Services Centre (SADC CSC)

A project was also run by the Southern African Development Community Climate Services Centre (SADC CSC) to support the 29th Southern African Regional Climate Outlook Forum (SARCOF29) . This allowed climate experts to learn about the various methodologies in seasonal forecasting developed under the Focus Africa project, and to generate the regional seasonal climate outlook for overlapping three monthly sub seasons from October 2024 to March 2025.