Engaging private sector in Climate Information Services (CIS) in Africa

Africa is in critical need of climate information. There have been efforts being made to fulfill these needs. Efforts made and development in climate information in Africa have been largely from national, regional and continental scale efforts. These efforts have laid down the much-needed milestone of climate information. However, the existing climate information needs further development and improvement. The ongoing efforts and anticipated developments should include ensuring the reliability, robustness and relevance aspects of climate information production. Re-visiting the magnitude of uncertainty in the available climate information and is influence on the robustness and actionability for decision making benefits African countries. In addition to global and regional efforts to enhance accessibility of climate information, such as the WMO’s EW4ALL initiative, prioritizing and spending resources towards improved climate information products and ensuring sustainability through self-owned technology are pivotal. An effective solution to achieve this is engaging the private sector in the climate information value chain; identifying critical gaps of the private sector, the support it needs, and transforming the role from users to producers and disseminators of climate information. These have multiple benefits: (1) countries spend their limited resources partly towards improving the performance of climate information, in addition to accessibility (2) consciously considering uncertainty of climate information products will keep them vigilant in their risk communication, intervention planning and implementation (3) elevate the role and responsibility of NHMSs towards ensuring the scientific rigor, reliability and robustness of state-of-the-art African led climate information and (4) benefit from several private sector actors to deliver diversified Climate information to meet the unmet needs. In these regard, this policy brief highlights the existing gaps in Africa’s climate information service, why engaging other stakeholders, such as the private sector, in the climate information service ecosystem is important, available opportunities for the private sector, the challenges and remedies the private sector needs, and who and what support can be provided for the successful engagement of private sectors is summarized.

Engdaw, M.M.; Gamoyo, M..; Vyas, S.; Steward, P..; Degefie, D.T.; Ahmed, J.S.; Wanjau, A.N.; Ghosh, A.