Jameel Observatory research lead Nathan Jensen contributed to this report documenting the activities of the DIRISHA project to enhance drought early warning and resilience of pastoralists in Kenya and Ethiopia.
In the face of unpredictable, recurrent and intense climate shocks, the critical need for timely and accurate information in drylands is increasingly clear. Crowdsourcing initiatives that use a participatory approach combining crowdsourcing techniques with citizen science can help to provide information near real-time in a cost-effective manner.
This report from the Drought Index-insurance for Resilience in the Sahel and Horn of Africa (DIRISHA) project (2021–2025) shows that crowdsourced information from livestock markets, rangelands transects and households can support decision-making and resilience programming while providing important ground-truthing data to improve the design and accuracy of index-based drought risk financing and insurance products for climate-risk management in pastoralist settings.
Supported by the SPARC programme and other partners, the Drought Index-insurance for Resilience in the Sahel and Horn of Africa (DIRISHA) project (2021–2025) supported the establishment and expansion of sentinel zones in Ethiopia and Kenya for the real-time and dynamic monitoring of multidimensional indicators of shocks and resilience, dissemination of near real-time information to the intended users, capacity development of national stakeholders, policy influencing and advocacy, and promoting gender and social inclusion.
A key component of the project was development of the KAZNET platform and app designed for collecting data from markets, households, and rangelands in remote pastoral regions of East Africa.
The major achievements of the DIRISHA project (2021–2025) include: (1) the establishment and expansion of sentinel zones in Ethiopia and Kenya for the real-time and dynamic monitoring of multidimensional indicators of shocks and resilience; (2) near real-time dissemination of information to the intended users; (3) capacity development of national stakeholders; (4) policy influencing and advocacy; and (5) promoting gender and
social inclusion.
The report explans that stakeholders appreciated the ability of DIRISHA’s KAZNET platform to monitor shocks in near real-time. They reported that when shocks are identified early, they can be addressed in a timely and cost-effective manner to minimise adverse impacts. In discussions with insurance companies, the importance of ground-truthing data was acknowledged as a way of providing a mechanism to compare the performance of the normalised difference of vegetation index (NDVI) with the situation on the ground. DIRISHA’s work also supported regional programmes on drought-risk financing and resilience-building and connected several important dimensions in such fragile contexts: including providing a better understanding of the relationship between droughts and conflict; improving the performance of value chains through markets development; and promoting innovation for resilience-building by identifying the mechanisms through which drought affects livelihoods.
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Read the report: Shikuku, K.M., Banerjee, R., Lepariyo, W., Baraza, M., Gobu, W., Godana, N., Galgallo, D., Paliwal, A., Malicha, W., Cherotich, F., Ochenje, I., Fava, F., Jensen, N., Chelanga, P., Alulu, V., Naibei, O., Ericksen, P. and Whitbread, A. 2025. Supporting (agro) pastoralists’ resilience through real-time monitoring of drought in Ethiopia and Kenya: Final technical report on the Drought Index-insurance for Resilience in the Sahel and Horn of Africa (DIRISHA) project. Technical Report. London: SPARC.