On 18 and 19 March 2025, the Jameel Observatory and Mercy Corps, supported by the SPARC programme, co-convened a workshop to review evidence on weather and climate information services (WCIS) use by pastoralist communities in the Horn of Africa, aiming to distil out priority actions and interventions that can enhance the relevance, reliability, availability, accessibility, delivery, and uptake of such services.
Weather and climate forecasts and associated information services are widely used in daily, business and policy decisions across the globe. Across farming, energy, travel, infrastructure and tourism, WCIS provide advance warning on conditions and their likely impacts.
In drylands where water is the defining characteristic, information on current conditions as well as forecasts and predictions are used in decisions on livelihoods, mobility, livestock production and markets, land and water management, as well as food, health and education.
Weather forecasts and analysis of predicted climate changes also contribute to emergency planning and response – to droughts and floods for example – used to target support for impacted communities and to build the resilience and adaptive capacities in dryland populations.
The starting point for the workshop was a perception that pastoralist communities across the Horn of Africa are not well-reached and supported by WCIS.
Designed as an ‘evidence review and distillation’ workshop, the Nairobi meeting brought together WCIS users and providers to discuss the latest evidence, identify key gaps, and explore practical solutions for strengthening WCIS for pastoralists.
Organised around four WCIS ‘pillars’ and considering the efforts of actors from community to regional and global levels, participants reviewed evidence, unpacked realities from theories, dived deeper into ‘first mile’ and community knowledge systems, discussed the roles of business services, explored synergies and insights from early warning and anticipatory action activities, and identified priority actions.
Four pillars of WCIS – source IRI (https://iri.columbia.edu/actoday/)
Drawing from this ‘four pillars of WCIS’ framework that helped shape discussions, key issues that are currently impeding actionable knowledge for pastoralists to adapt included:
Generating WCIS knowledge and information:
- Indigenous knowledge is not well documented, and knowledge holders are declining (in part reflecting ageing)
- Limitations of observation stations and the failure to integrate indigenous and scientific knowledge
- Absence of data sharing frameworks impedes effective coordination
Translating and transferring WCIS knowledge and information:
- Inadequate attention to the generation of information that is salient to pastoralists’ decision-making contexts, particularly around grazing management and relocation routes
- Failure to use the full range of communication mechanisms that are necessary to reach pastoralists (to reflect age and gender preferences)
Using WCIS knowledge and information:
- Use is impeded when trust in scientific information is often low, and undermined when scientific and indigenous forecasts do not correspond
- Use is impeded when information is not salient or is not accessible
Opportunities to address these issues and increase actions of pastoralists from WCIS included:
- Artificial intelligence and data analytics to improve predictive capacity and information availability
- Public-private-partnertshipss to leverage the relative strengths of the public and private sectors to enhance service delivery
- Investments in indigenous knowledge documentation
- Expanding the range of communication mechanisms, and in particular capitalizing on trusted community figures (to simultaneously add credibility) and information technologies (although bearing in mind these do not suit all needs)
- Greater co-production through engagement of pastoralists with forecast producers, including to identify and generate more salient WCIS (e.g. building on the success of participatory scenario planning), and ensure more effective feedback mechanisms
- Investigate how to better blend different knowledge systems – including looking at what such blending should look like (i.e. not just using indigenous knowledge to add legitimacy to scientific forecasts)
- Financing WCIS in project budgets (e.g. by NGOs) – although taking care not to reinforce the current situation of reliance on external funding
- Better integrate WCIS with early warning and anticipatory action, so that the former can be used as triggers for the latter
- Improve coordination between stakeholders, with clearer role definition and better integration, including between government and non-government actors
- Future-focused approaches could shift from monitoring current conditions to help pastoralists to anticipate future climate variability.
Emerging key messages were crowdsourced at the end of the workshop and included:
- Enhance community inputs to WCIS and advisories, through co-creation and co-dissemination and inclusive processes such as participatory scenario planning (PSP).
- Institutionalise WCIS processes to include local governance structures as well as government partners.
- Devise and disseminate information in more accessible formats and language targeted to the specific needs and characteristics of pastoralist communities.
- Bundle forecasts with associated guidance tailored for pastoralists.
- Expand and enhance use of multiple dissemination channels, including local platforms such as radio, extension, and barazas and involving local actors and NGOs and community forums.
- Keep dissemination simple, by using existing dissemination channels and investing in trust, not innovation.
A full report and video recordings will be available soon.
Presentations:
- Derbyshire, S.F. 2025. Pastoralism, Drought and Early Warning. Presented at Weather and Climate Information Services for Pastoralists – Evidence review and distillation workshop, Nairobi, 18-19 March 2025. Nairobi: ILRI. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/174175
- Nyakundi, E. 2025. Early Warning Early Action and WCIS for Pastoralists. Presented at Weather and Climate Information Services for Pastoralists – Evidence review and distillation workshop, Nairobi, 18-19 March 2025. Nairobi: Save the Children. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/174174
- Roba, G.M. 2025. Weather and Climate Information Services for Pastoralists – theories and realities. Presented at Weather and Climate Information Services for Pastoralists – Evidence review and distillation workshop, Nairobi, 18-19 March 2025. Nairobi: ILRI. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/174172
- Kirwa, L. 2025. Weather and Climate Information Services For Pastoralists. Presented at Weather and Climate Information Services for Pastoralists – Evidence review and distillation workshop, Nairobi, 18-19 March 2025. Nairobi: iShamba. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/174173