On 17 and 18 September 2025, the Jameel Observatory and Mercy Corps, supported by the SPARC programme, held a workshop in Wajir, Kenya to explore the application and use of weather and climate information services (WCIS) for pastoralist communities.
Building from an earlier dialogue, this workshop brought together local actors and stakeholders from a single county in Kenya to examine the institutional set up for generating and sharing WCIS, and to identify the bottlenecks and how they can be overcome to better ensure that WCIS contribute to an enabling environment to reduce risks for pastoralists.
Bringing together civil society, business leaders, local government and local WCIS providers, the two-day event led participants through a participatory process in which they:
- mapped the current WCIS landscape and initiatives and experiences with these
- explored gaps and bottlenecks
- identified opportunities and solutions to improve the WCIS environment for pastoralist communities.
Reflecting on LinkedIn, ILRI and Jameel Observatory researcher Samuel Derbyshire explains what the workshop was about:
“I’ve just returned from a few days in Wajir, where we came together with colleagues from the Wajir County Government, Wajir Community Radio, the NDMA, the Kenya Meteorological Department, civil society organisations and researchers.
The workshop, run as a collaboration between Mercy Corps and Jameel Observatory and supported by SPARC, set out to understand how weather and climate information flows through Wajir, and how it shapes the decisions that pastoralists and institutions make.
We mapped current information systems, shared case studies from participants’ own experiences – what decisions were taken, how, and with what challenges and successes – and then worked together to develop a collaborative action plan for the months and years ahead.
It struck me how crucial this work is in a context where old narratives about pastoralism still limit investment and support. Too often, pastoralism is cast in narrow and restrictive terms, with pastoralists imagined as placid ‘end users’ of information. In reality, they engage actively with county governments, organise collectively and test and adapt information in creative ways that shape both livelihoods and governance in the drylands.”
Following the workshop, Nelly Bosibori Nyamweya (Mercy Corps) reported initial insights from these discussions at our recent joint ICPALD-Jameel Observatory-SPARC event on ‘Building the Resilience and Prosperity of Pastoralists and Dryland Communities.’
Challenges she said were dentified by Wajir workshop participants included: Limited multi-sectoral stakeholder coordination structures; inadequate infrastructure such as automated weather stations and community radio; missing links between WCIS products to anticipary action, few feedback loops with WCIS providers; and low trust in formal climate information.
Opportunities she highlighted included greater co-production of WCIS products with the community as well as merging indigenous knowledge into WCIS (see her slides).
More
On 24 November, our 7th Pastoralism and Drylands Development seminar in Nairobi will bring together participants from this workshop in a panel conversation on ‘Weather and climate information from the frontlines of change: Insights from Wajir.’ More information