Informing African Agriculture.

Research by the World Economic Forum shows that in Africa, a continent that faces typically low productivity for basic foodstuffs, domestic food production cannot keep up with national demand and, as a result, countries have to import most of their food and the population has to shell out about 60% of disposable income for food. To manage poor harvests, however, more information is needed, such as appropriate monitoring of crops, in the fields and on farms, and accurate rainfall information to be able to make irrigation decisions. “In Cameroon, only agri-food industries formally take climate information into account in the management of their activities,” says Cameroon, which last year worked on a climate app dedicated to African countries with the support of the ECMWF

“However, they mainly rely on past local measurements, which leave room for many uncertainties related to climate and weather elements such as precipitation, temperature, wind speed and sunlight. Future changes also play a role, but they are not taken into account, probably because they lack access to data on climate projections and/or do not know how to manage or process the data,’ explains Dr Menang. The application for climate indicators called “African Agro Climatic Indicators” developed by dr. Menang provides long-term information, both past and future, and is aimed at agribusiness industries that grow biennial and perennial crops. The app is based on ECMWF’s ERA5 past data collection.