In September, TomorrowNow brought government leaders from Kenya, Zambia, Malawi and Nigeria together at the Africa Food Systems Forum (AFSF) in Kigali, Rwanda, one of the continent’s biggest annual meetings on food and farming. AGRA, Regen Organics and the Gates Foundation joined them on stage.
The subject was Digital Climate Advisory Services, or DCAS. All four countries now run their own national service, and between them they reach more than 6 million farmers with agro-met intelligence. We wanted to show what these services are achieving, and to talk about what it will take to keep them running and bring them to more countries.
What is DCAS?
Most African farmers depend on rain, so the weather shapes almost every decision they make. A forecast that says “24mm of rain this week” doesn’t tell a farmer whether to plant. agro-met intelligence does. National weather agencies and agricultural experts work together to turn the forecast into specific advice, like “plant your maize now” or “wait, a dry spell is coming.” Farmers receive it by text or voice message in their own language.
The panel
Dr. Samaila Taiye Tehinse, Director, Federal Department of Agricultural Extension Services, Nigeria
Edson Nkonde, Director, Zambia Meteorological Department
Dr. Alice Murage, Deputy Director General, KALRO (Crops Research), Kenya
Simon Mulwa, Director of ICT and Digital Agriculture, KALRO, Kenya
Dr. Hamilton Kamwana, Director of Planning, Ministry of Natural Resources and Climate Change, Malawi
Brian Miranda, CEO, TomorrowNow
Rapporteur: Dr. Forster Boateng, Managing Director, C4Impact Advisory Group
Governments are already delivering
Kenya has run its service for four years. The Kenyan Agriculture and Livestock Research Organization (KALRO) and the Kenya Meteorological Department (KMD) manage it together, and today the service reaches more than 5.6 million farmers. Simon Mulwa, KALRO’s Director of ICT and Digital Agriculture, said early versions focused too much on the weather itself. The team now starts with the decision a farmer has to make and works back from there. KALRO also runs a call center where farmers can put questions directly to its researchers.
The proudest achievement is moving DCAS from an isolated pilot to a national service reaching more than 5.6 million farmers, with the institutions and science behind it.”
Zambia launched its service in late 2025, with more than six government ministries involved. Dr. Edson Nkonde, Director of the Zambia Meteorological Department, described how it changed his agency’s work.
In the past, our focus at ZMD was just to generate the best forecast that we could, issue it, and give the burden to the farmer to now interpret that forecast. Now, instead of us just telling the farmer it will rain tomorrow, we can tell them that even if it’s going to rain tomorrow, please do not plant, because we are expecting dry conditions later on.”
Last season, Zambia reached about 35,000 farmers with advisories co-produced in seven local languages. This season it plans to reach a million, adding three more crops and livestock.
Farmer trust is the real measure of success
Sending messages is arguably the easy part. What matters is whether farmers use them and get results. Simon Mulwa was clear on this.
Scale should not only be measured by the number of messages that are sent. Anyone can send messages, but the real measure of success is where the farmers understand and trust and apply that advice.”
Christine Mutana farms in Makueni County, in eastern Kenya, where the rains have become harder to read. They often start early and heavy, then stop for weeks and leave crops to dry out. Christine gets advice through Kenya’s national service. Last season the message told her to wait, because the rains would come late. She held off:
“If I hadn’t received the message, I would’ve finished preparing my farm and I would’ve started planting. The messages came beforehand and they said I should delay planting because the rains would be a little late.”
Holding off meant she didn’t put seed in dry ground or waste work preparing her land too soon.
What it takes to scale
Collaboration can build an effective service, but sustaining it requires a place in national plans and budgets.
“We need to institutionalise DCAS in our programming, which means it has to be included in our budget so that it is sustainable.”
Hamilton Kamwana framed DCAS as protection for the far larger sums governments already spend on agriculture and food security:
“The investment going into agriculture is huge, but climate shocks erode the returns. Institutionalising DCAS is how you protect that investment. Weigh the cost of the food-security support you provide after a climate shock against the smaller investment in DCAS that could have prevented it. This is why DCAS matters for national planning, not just for the season.”
The numbers support him. A full season of advisories costs around 33 cents per farmer. For governments and development partners, that makes DCAS an investment in a lasting national capability rather than a short-term project.
Listen to Dr. Kamwana’s thoughts in the video below.
Shared foundations across the region
Countries scale faster when they build on what already exists. Malawi and Zambia have both sent delegations to Kenya to learn from KALRO’s experience and adapt it at home.
“If we want to scale and reach 100 million farmers across the continent, we can’t be starting from scratch in every single country.”
A practical blueprint and a community of peers now exist. New adopters can build on years of experience while shaping the service around their own institutions and farmers. For funders, the opportunity is in the shared foundations that make national adoption possible: common infrastructure, tested methods, and support to move working services from grant funding into government systems.
The discussion in Kigali pointed towards a practical priority: helping governments own, finance, and sustain approaches that have already shown their value.
Dr Samaila Taiye Tehinse, Director of the Federal Department of Agricultural Extension Services in Nigeria also shared what a nationally owned DCAS could mean for his country:
"With DCAS, we can reach new levels of productivity, and farmers will benefit. As a director, I will be proud that this was achieved while I was in the seat. We have to embrace DCAS, for a better tomorrow and for more secure agricultural production across all our villages. That, I believe, we can achieve."
TomorrowNow's role
TomorrowNow works as a partner to governments. National institutions own, lead and deliver their services. We help them build the systems underneath, connect them with the science and partners they need, and help countries learn from each other as more of them come on board.
What’s next?
Our thanks to every panelist who joined us in Kigali, and to the teams in each country building these services season after season.
The next phase depends on three things. Governments need to embed DCAS in their institutions and budgets. Funders need to back shared infrastructure and long-term ownership. Partners need to judge success by whether farmers make better decisions.
To find out more about Digital Climate Advisory Services, get in touch.
