Earlier this year, the Jameel Observatory supported its partner Save the Children to develop an anticipatory action research agenda in Somalia. Part of a wider project supported by the German Federal Foreign Office, the aim was to map early warning and preparedness challenges and to set out a research and learning agenda to overcome them.
Over the past two decades, Somalia has faced over 30 climate events – including severe droughts and floods – and climate change is predicted to increase their frequency and severity. At the same time, the gap between humanitarian appeals and receipts has been growing. In such an environment, there is a critical need for developing effective, proactive measures to mitigate the impacts of climate shocks on vulnerable populations, particularly pastoral communities that are central to Somalia’s economy and culture.
While advances in early warning systems (EWS) enable timely and accurate weather forecasts that could enable stakeholders to act before disasters strike, thereby avoiding many of the costs associated with disaster response and reducing the human suffering that disasters cause, numerous challenges have limited their uptake in Somalia. Even when climate shock forecasts are taken up, preparedness responses, both by community members and those that support them, are often limited. The result is that much of the potential value of early warning systems (and the anticipatory actions that they could trigger) has gone unrealized.
The Reducing Impacts of Disasters Using the Anticipatory Action (AA) Framework in Somalia project aims to increase preparedness activities and improve the effectiveness of anticipatory action.
As a first step, the project held six workshops with government workers, INGOs and pastoralists across Somalia to learn about their use of early warning and anticipatory action and challenges to greater use. Each workshop mapped current early warning processes and preparedness activities across all sectors – prioritizing challenges for more effective preparedness. Next, we developed a set of research agendas that aim to address the challenges prioritized in the workshops.
The report provides a brief description of the challenges prioritized during the workshops and the proposed research agendas.
Priorities for more effective early warning and early action
The first challenge is that early warning systems currently do not meet the needs of its clients, whether they be government workers, NGO field staff, or pastoralists. There are issues related to trust, content, lead time, access and language that are barriers to use. Considerable emphasis was placed on the need for EWS to be co-developed with users and for tailored approaches to information sharing. On top of these challenges, there is fragmentation in the EWS space that leads to confusion and contradictions, undermining the system as a whole.
The second challenge is to ensure that when shocks are forecasted, effective action is taken. There are many barriers to those actions. For pastoralists, there may be cultural reasons not to act or resource constraints limit opportunities. For organizations and community-level groups, resource constraints can also limit actions but so can a lack of action plan or poor coordination. Across all sectors, there is a need to grow capacity of individuals to make informed decisions based on available forecast information and in understanding the value of preparedness
Across both challenge areas, there was an emphasis on (1) the need for activities and structures to support existing local EWS and preparedness measures and (2) to ensure that information and actions supported individuals of all ages, livelihoods, abilities, and socio-economic class. The place of children, both in their vulnerability and their potential as change agents, was also a frequent topic of discussion.
Proposed research agendas
Drawing on literature and the priorities identified during the workshops, the following research agendas have been developed.
Early warning for community action: This research agenda asks how the co-development of early warning systems that value both external and internal knowledge and systems can be used to improve the value of early warning for communities. We proposed an agenda that starts with the existing community systems and then seeks to strengthen them, rather than developing parallel systems. This work will pay special attention to diversity in needs across the spectrum of access, age and income. Our research questions are then aimed at testing various approaches and strategies to identify which are most effective at meeting those needs.
Changing attitudes of community members towards EW and AA: This agenda aims to increase the use of effective preparedness measures. This work first requires that community members have access to accurate and appropriate forecasts (agenda 1) and then works to build capacities on how forecasts are made and how to interpret and assess them. Once the community has access to and understanding of an early warning system that has been tailored to their needs, we can focus on understanding social norms and individual perceptions that contribute to or undermine take up of early warning messaging and preparedness activities. We anticipate that schools will act as an important channel for training adults and children on early warning and preparedness so that they can become agents of change. The research agenda asks questions related to effective capacity development, social norms and behavioural change.
Increasing private sector and diaspora AA investments: The private sector and diaspora already play important roles in disaster response, by mobilizing resources and providing direct support in ways that are very different from those available to humanitarian actors and governments. Here we ask, how to most effectively extend that support to include anticipatory actions? A second component of this agenda examines how the private sector support can support anticipatory action through investments in profitable business that mitigate the impacts of shocks, such as insurance, or that improve public services, such as providing channels for early warning services or cash transfers (e.g., mobile wallets). There is a need to better understand existing engagements and appetite for investments in preparedness as well as the development of strategies for increasing it.
More
See a related presentation and download the report: Jensen, N.D., Abdi, M., and Hussein, J. 2025. Co-creation of a research agenda for localized anticipatory action in Somalia. Nairobi: Jameel Observatory for Food Security Early Action. http://dx.doi.org/10.7488/era/6012
See earlier research in Somalia by Save the Children: Anticipatory action in protracted crises – research insights from East Africa
See a related news item and download a report: Mercy Corps and Jameel Observatory for Food Security Early Action. 2025. Weather and Climate Information Services for Pastoralists: Notes from an evidence review and distillation workshop, Nairobi, 18-19 March 2025. Nairobi: Mercy Corps. Download: https://hdl.handle.net/10568/174783