Last month, IOI, in collaboration with colleagues from the West and Central African Research & Education Network (WACREN) and the Institute for Contemporary Theoretical Physics (ICTP), hosted a workshop focused on strengthening Africa’s climate research infrastructure.
The workshop brought together researchers, data experts, and infrastructure providers from across West and Central Africa to:
- identify critical data infrastructure needs for addressing climate change and food insecurity.
- explore potential funding opportunities and strategies.
- discuss collaborative approaches to building and sustaining data infrastructure that center the needs of communities most affected by climate change.
Participants included representatives from organizations such as WASCAL, AfriGEO, and GÉANT.
Collaboration, coordination, and cost emerged as key themes necessary to drive more robust support for West Africa and the continent more broadly. Examples of collaboration mentioned by the participants included interplay between African-focused organizations and their international or European counterparts, as well as deep reliance on existing connectivity provided through research and education networks, such as WACREN, which is financially supported by the European Commission via the AfricaConnect Project. The need for frictionless, reliable, and cost-efficient data sharing and instrumentation for weather and climate data is tantamount, with newer, (sometimes) cheaper sensors and Internet-of-things (IoT) devices driving down the cost of data collection instrumentation, but often underestimating the other costs of accessing weather stations and satellite data, addressing connectivity gaps, data transmission and storage, and digitization from paper copies of relevant research data.
Coordination arose in discussing the pressing need for these research communities for meteorological data, with organizations and efforts including WASCAL, RUFORUM, AfriGEO, Ghana Meteorological Agency (GMet), the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), EUMETSAT, Group on Earth Observations (GEO) playing pivotal roles in providing data access, training, coordination frameworks, and platforms for participation to advance weather and climate research in the region. Significant opportunities exist when these organizations look at strengths across efforts, especially in terms of collective action towards increasing funding, resourcing, and attention on these critical efforts.
Over the course of the session, we explored infrastructure hurdles and needs faced by the weather and climate research community regarding data access and sharing. Examples of data infrastructures cited that are heavily relied upon included:
- Facilities collecting data and instrumentation
- Data measuring facilities/instrumentation (e.g. weather stations, IoT devices)
- Network/connectivity
- Data transmission
- Instrument needed for the diigitization of data
- High-performance computing resources
- Data storage
- Power supply (power interruptions
- Protocols for data exchange
- Cloud services
- Data access/discovery solutions
- Data itself (often presenting access issues, as well):
- Satellite data and remote sensing data
- Meteorological data
The discussion then turned towards the resourcing for these efforts, and where there were opportunities to reduce fragility in how these initiatives were financially supported (e.g. source of funding, reliance on 1-2 funding sources without diversification), to funders and potential partners who should be engaged more deeply in a collective fashion to invest in these data infrastructure needs for weather and climate research for the region. Participants were encouraged to be expansive in their thinking – and think about organizations that would also align with the desire to center African needs and contexts in this work.
Suggestions included bilateral aid agencies and (inter)governmental organizations such as the World Bank, USAID, GIZ, NORAD, JICA, and AFD, as well as NEPAD of the African Union, Mastercard Foundation, Global Framework for Climate Services, WMO, Mo Ibrahim Foundation, UNEP’s Green Climate Fund, international climate funds (e.g. Global Environmental Facility, Adaptation Fund), and the African Development Bank.
We see this workshop as the first step towards more meaningful collaboration with these organisations on increasing investment in their critical data infrastructures necessary to serve their research communities and populations locally, and are planning to continue this important work in the near year. Want to stay connected on upcoming developments? Let us know by signing up here! Our thanks again to our colleagues at WACREN, ICTP, and all of the participants for this opportunity to help catalyse conversation and collective action towards change.