East Africa – TomorrowNow.org & Salient are working together to ensure smallholder farmers have access to sub-seasonal to seasonal (S2S) weather forecasting technology to support agricultural decision-making in East Africa.
The Challenge
Climate variability and extreme weather events are increasingly threatening global food security.
Farmers, agribusinesses, and policymakers need precise, actionable weather insights to mitigate risks and build resilience for inclusive prosperity.
By leveraging transformative philanthropic capital from the Gates Foundation, TomorrowNow and Salient joined forces to bridge the gap between cutting-edge sub-seasonal to seasonal (S2S) weather forecasting technology and real-world agricultural decision-making in Africa.
The Solution: Accurate and Reliable S2S Forecast Insights
Weather forecasting beyond the typical two-week horizon has long been a challenge. Salient is pioneering S2S forecasting, offering accurate, reliable predictions for weeks to months in advance. Here’s how:
Next-Gen Innovation – Salient combines established traditional numerical weather prediction (NWP) models with novel machine-learning techniques that extract predictive signals from historical weather data, oceanic patterns, land data, and atmospheric dynamics. Salient leverages the power of both approaches to deliver accurate and reliable S2S predictions.
Advanced Decision-Making Support – Salient offers tailored forecasts for specific organizational needs, aligning predictions with real-world decision-making processes.
At the American Meteorological Society Annual Conference 2025, where TomorrowNow was in attendance, Salient’s CTO, Karl Critz, and Data Scientist, Fran Bartolić, presented on the technical approach to creating S2S weather forecasts that are useful, actionable and can underpin decision support systems. Dig in with the presentation recordings [here] and [here]
This strength was also showcased during Salient’s January Webinar on applications of S2S within energy and agriculture. In case you missed it, be sure to watch the recording [here].
TomorrowNow and Salient Bring S2S Forecasts to Africa
With support from Gates Foundation, Salient provides S2S forecasts to TomorrowNow’s Global Access Platform, which centralizes high-quality, localized weather and climate datasets, ensuring that knowledge and innovation are broadly disseminated and accessible at a reasonable cost to farmer-facing organizations serving smallholder farmers in Africa.
S2S forecasts support agricultural productivity and food security by enabling farmer-facing organizations to develop decision-support systems that help farmers make crucial decisions, such as selecting the right crops or varieties and determining when to plant before the growing season begins.
Rather than relying on outdated historical trends, smallholder farmers can now access forward-looking, reliable weather predictions to improve productivity and resilience.
Why Does This Matter?
Weather intelligence isn’t just about predicting rain or temperature—it’s about delivering data-driven insights that enhance resilience across the entire food value chain.
Subseasonal and seasonal decision-making support for smallholder farmers in Africa enables the planting and harvesting decisions that have the greatest potential to reduce yield losses and allocate limited resources effectively.
“One season can change a life. It can push you into poverty or lift you out. A good season is possible with next-gen weather services” – Kenyan Farmer, 2023.
By combining TomorrowNow’s mission-driven approach with Salient’s pioneering weather modeling, our two organizations are making high-quality weather intelligence accessible to last-mile communities at the frontlines of climate change.
Learn more about our work:
