TomorrowNow hosted a technical workshop in Nairobi to convene project partners and key stakeholders within the weather & climate sector.
Nairobi, Kenya – TomorrowNow.org hosted a technical workshop in Nairobi to convene key partners & stakeholders who are collaborating with us to operationalize weather & climate services to empower food security applications.
The purpose of the technical workshop was to kick off the next phase of the Osiris grant received by TomorrowNow from Gates Foundation to bring the power of advanced weather assets to enhance and accelerate the adoption of next-gen weather & climate data critical for small scale farming applications in Africa.
“We are working with TomorrowNow and partners to realize the potential of using next generation weather and climate data for pest & disease advisories in focus of our collective goal of reaching 100M smallholder farmers by the year 2030 and ensuring the communities most affected by climate change have access to information that allows them to take necessary action to protect their crops”
– Pascale Bodevin, Project Manager, Centre for Agriculture and Bioscience International (CABI).
Project Osiris is a multi-year project led by TomorrowNow to enhance, accelerate and make weather intelligence more accessible and useful to support communities most impacted by climate change today, starting with smallholder farming.
Space tech and Artificial Intelligence hold exciting promise for driving step change improvements in weather forecasting and early warnings in Africa, but data availability and affordability are key pain points that continue to hamper inclusive access of next-gen weather services at scale.
Through this project, we are building a Global Access Platform that sets out to solve two key problems currently limiting the uptake of weather data in Africa:
- Data access
- Data quality
“Together with our partners, we are getting timely information to farmers today and leveraging space innovation & AI to achieve the optimization needed to improve the quality of weather data. We are focused on unlocking the potential of next gen tech by making data relevant, localized & affordable in Africa”
– Georgina Campbell Flatter, Executive Director, TomorrowNow.org.
Workshop participants drawn from various organizations used the opportunity to brainstorm and share ideas on the various work packages and milestones necessary to achieve project delivery over the next 12 months.
TomorrowNow hosted Data Providers Salient Predictions, The Trans-African Hydro-Meteorological Observatory (TAHMO), Arable & Tomorrow.io who are going to avail weather & climate data to our model in helping us support agricultural decision making in East Africa.
Our Data Optimization & Localization partners Rhiza Research & Predictia Intelligent Data Solutions enlightened workshop participants about their role in improving the quality of our weather data through activities such as bias adjustment leveraging our partner TAHMO’s ground observation infrastructure.
We also learnt from Kartoza about the technical aspects of how they are going to build TomorrowNow.org’s proposed Global Access Platform (GAP) that’s going to help various stakeholders, including National Agricultural Research and Extension Services (NARES) like Kenya Agricultural and Livestock Research Organisation (KALRO), better serve their users at the community level.
“We are bringing along our deep knowledge & experience in the field of spatial data analytics to help build TomorrowNow’s Global Access Platform that aims to enable food security stakeholders access analysis-ready data & generate relevant decision support tools for farmers.”
– Gavin Fleming, Joint MD, Kartoza.
Enabling Access to High Quality Weather & Climate Data
Smallholder farmers require on-farm decision support tools enabled by quality weather and climate information yet current data daps are reducing the reliability of advisories & recommendations they depend on.
For this reason, TomorrowNow & partners are setting up a Gold Standard Validation Network (GSVN) to leverage on-ground sensors that are going to backfill data & ensure that it becomes analysis ready for various food security applications.
The GSVN will support our Global Access Platform (GAP) that’s going to enable access of analysis-ready weather & climate data by key stakeholders involved in the following use cases: crop simulation modeling, seed trial variety modeling, rice yield modeling, pest/disease modeling, and on-farm crop advisories & trials.
As follow up to the laser disdrometers we commissioned in partnership with Kenya Meteorological Department, we have begun the process of installing weather sensors from Arable Labs that are going to provide ground-truth data to the GAP.
Last Mile Delivery of Weather & Climate Services
Current evidence suggests that incorrect timing of planting can cost farmers 30% or more on yield outcomes.
Replanting is an expensive action – therefore timely insights before onset of each planting season can translate to massive on-farm savings.
Our partners involved in Program Use Cases Regrow Ag, CGIAR, International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), Regen Organics, CABI/Assimila shared insights about how they are going to help us with on-the-ground testing and application of improved weather data & climate data to power activities such as pest & disease modelling to feed into smallholder farmer advisories.
“We’re working with TomorrowNow.org and other organizations in Kenya to demonstrate how high quality weather data, pest/disease predictions, and the right seed & fertilizer recommendations can improve smallholder farming outcomes”
– Dan Klemmer, Director of Innovation at Regen Organics.
We were honored to also have the participation, input & feedback from our partners & colleagues at One Acre Fund, KALRO and Kenya Meteorological Department.
TomorrowNow & partners remain committed to delivering on the northstar goal of reaching 100M smallholder farmers with weather intelligence by the year 2030, and wish to THANK the ecosystem as well as our funders Gates Foundation for their continued guidance and support along the way.
