Improved hydromet services needed to free farmers

These farmers, and the country as a whole, are in need of a system that collects reliable hydrological and meteorological data.

This information would be useful in facilitating the required coordination with national and local early warning systems to help protect lives and livelihoods.

Vocabulary : Hydrometeorology is a branch of meteorology and hydrology that studies the transfer of water and energy between the land surface and the lower atmosphere.

“Farming is not a safe venture these days,” says Tito Maluku, a 49-year-old smallholder farmer in Msowero Village in Kilosa District, Morogoro Region.

He blames the unpredictable weather patterns, saying the situation puts farmers in a tight spot since they are no longer sure of what will happen the next day.

The father of five recounts that in 2014, he experienced a very difficult time, caused by the changing rainfall patterns in his home village, a few kilometres from Morogoro Municipality.

Maluku who mostly uses family labour to conduct his farming, says normally February is the planting month for maize and other cereals.

“Our expectation is that when maize is planted mid-February, it is going to meet enough rains that are observed in March and April. These rains end when the maize matures,” he said.

But in 2014 things turned different as all the three acres of maize he had planted were swept by floods, caused by downpour in the Uluguru Mountains.
“I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw nothing on my farm,” he said.

“It was a disaster to my family as the farm used to feed us and some of the maize harvested from this farm I sell …but after the rains I had nothing , I waited for God’s miracle,” he lamented.

“I haven’t stopped farming, as this is part of my job. I am still farming, despite the fact that I don’t know what will happen tomorrow to my farm,” he said.
“In the past, we had our own way of detecting the rain season but now things have changed. No one is precisely sure of harvesting crops at the end of the season,” the farmer said.

Maluku represents millions of smallholder farmers in Tanzania, who have been experiencing either floods or prolonged droughts brought about by Climate Change.

Things become more complicated as most farmers are not empowered with the technology needed to predict the amount of rains that will fall in a particular locale.

In this regard, five African nations are piloting a World Bank-funded ‘Modernizing Africa Hydromet project’ aimed at addressing challenges of operating hydro-meteorological systems facing the continent.

The idea of the project is to modernise a country’s hydrological services so as to ably get accurate, timely and useful flood and drought forecast information due to the impacts of Climate Change of more severe weather hazards.

Countries which are under the pilot project include Zambia, Senegal, Cameroon, and Madagascar.The project is part of the Climate and Disaster Resilience Initiative for Sub-Saharan Africa which was launched during the 17th World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) Congress in June 2015.

Nelson Katunzi is an agricultural officer in Tanzania’s Ministry of Agriculture and Irrigation who suggests the need for better meteorological services to be in place for improved early warning systems.

He says information on weather needs to be availed to end users, the farmers.

“Farmers in most cases fall victim to floods or drought. The challenge I see is that those who provide information on weather forecasts don’t disseminate it to end-users. But if they provide it, farmers fail to interpret it,” he said.

He, however, said in Tanzania, the ministry of Agriculture and Irrigation works closely with the Tanzania Meteorological Agency (TMA) so that farmers get information (weather predictions) as soon as possible.

Dr Swan Osina is a Tanzanian meteorologist who suggests the need for weather forecast information to be simplified so that the end users such as farmers, livestock keepers, and fishermen understand and effectively use the information.

“Our target should be the end users of the information gathered from our weather stations, the need for language to be simple should be our priority,” she says.

Dr Makoto Suwa is a World Bank senior disaster risk management specialist who suggests the need for African nations to modernise their national hydro-meteorological (hydromet) services to address Climate Change-related hazards like floods and drought.

Addressing the inception workshop of the ‘Modernizing Africa Hydromet’ project, Dr Suwa says that reliable and timely hydrological and meteorological (hydromet) information plays a vital role in saving lives and increasing the productivity and socio-economic benefits.

But, the World Bank expert says in many African countries hydromet services are overwhelmed with a myriad of challenges ranging from institutional, technical, and financial to management.
“These make most of them unable to meet users’ needs and sustain their services,” the expert says.

Citing a recent WMO survey, Dr Suwa says: “Around 50 per cent of the surface and 70 per cent of the upper air weather stations in Africa didn’t report data.”

He adds: “Our recent work in the Nile Basin confirmed that decision makers on both the information providers’ and data users’ side have very limited understanding and appreciation of the value of hydromet information.”

He says hydromet services issue timely and actionable weather, climate and hydrological information at national and local levels; hence, reducing the impact of disasters and climate risks on lives, livelihoods, and economic assets as well as improving the resilience of investments.

Eng. Mbogo Futakamba is Tanzania’s Permanent Secretary in the ministry of Water and Irrigation who lauds the Bretton Woods Institution for supporting the project which complements African nations’ efforts towards addressing the challenges of operating hydro meteorological systems facing the continent.

He says: “By modernising our countries’ hydrological services we will be able to get accurate, timely and useful flood and drought forecast information due to the impacts of Climate Change of more severe weather hazards.”

Futakamba divulges that his ministry has 853 stations countrywide of which 280 are river gauging, 64 are weather, 162 are rain gauges, 232 for water quality checks, 77 for sediments sampling and 38 are for groundwater monitoring.

“But, the challenge remains particularly in areas related to the expansion of the hydromet network as well as maintenance and smooth operation of the existing stations,” he says.

The official, however, discloses that some of the stations, particularly those dealing with river gauging, need modern equipment that can enable automatic transmission of data to headquarters.

Farmers across Africa are suffering from one of the continent’s worst droughts on record, the results of the cyclical El Nino phenomenon exacerbatedby climate change, say experts.

US has already pledged USD 97 million of aid to Ethiopia, where 11 million people are at risk of famine. South Africa, Tanzania, Malawi and Zimbabwe also report acute water shortages.

According to a recent World Bank report, Africa’s governments, local communities, and farmers need better weather data in an effort to get the whole planet connected to the internet by 2020.

Africa urgently needs 4,000 to 5,000 weather stations for countries to track and understand changes in the world’s climate, according to the World Bank.
Thin data flow and poor internet penetration leave many communities flying blind in the face of extreme conditions such as drought or heavy rains, it warns in the report.

“The lives of the majority of the world’s people remain largely untouched by the digital revolution. Only around 15 per cent can afford access to broadband internet,” it says.

The benefits of investing in better weather systems could be anywhere between USD4-36 billion according to the 2016 ‘Digital Dividends’ study.

While some development projects use mobile phone networks to share information, an estimated 2 billion have no access to them, while 60 per cent of the world’s population has no internet.

The report cites a pilot project in Colombia which merged weather forecasts with historical data on climate and harvests, allowing farmers to make decisions on optimal planting times for rice crops.

“In an early application, the model correctly foresaw that crops would fail due to drought and advised farmers not to waste time and money on planting,” says the Bank.