Earlier in October, KADI project consortium met up in Nairobi and online for our annual meeting and stakeholder engagement. Two events were hosted at the Regional Centre for Mapping of Resources for Development. Some highlights and the presentations by our experts are shared below.
Review of the proposed concepts for pan-African research infrastructures
On Tuesday October 15th, we hosted a stakeholder workshop and engaged with key stakeholders to review the proposed concepts for pan-African research infrastructures and to explore potential collaborations. The goal is to identify ways to support climate service requirements and incorporate them into a preliminary design for the necessary research infrastructure, providing vital information on variables such as temperature and air pollution levels. The presentations from the day’s programme are listed below (click on the title to open the presentation).
- The Vision and mission of the KADI Project by Werner L. Kutsch (ICOS ERIC)
- Climate Service Needs Identified from the WP1 Stakeholder Engagement Workshop in July by Venla Aaltonen (UTU) & Marisa Gonzalez (UP)
- Existing Collaborations with KMD and GAW Kenya by Jörg Klausen (MeteoSwiss)
- History and Progress on Eddy Covariance Research in East Africa: lessons learned by Vincent Odongo (ILRI) & Lutz Merbold (Empa)
- ICOS Perspective – RI Impact Pathways by Evi-Carita Riikonen (ICOS ERIC)
- ICOS Perspective – ICOS Cities by Claudio D’Onofrio (ICOS Cities)
Policy cooperation and networking
On Thursday October 17th, we organised an in person outreach and networking event. The event was part of the policy cooperation activity in KADI, where synergies are sought to support the Africa-Europe strategy.
Keynote from Dr David Muita (KMD/University of Nairobi)
Towards Improving Early Warning Systems in Kenya: Examples from operational and research-based efforts to strengthen Preparedness and Early action
Keynote from Prof. Niina Käyhkö (University of Turku)
Resilience Academy as an urban climate service ecosystem
Urgent need for Research Infrastructures and Climate Services in Africa
The key messages from the KADI Annual meeting 2024 accentuate key areas of recurring needs in Research Infrastructure (RI) and climate services in Africa. Most are centered on the demand to urgently address issues around coverage sparsity, availability, access, quality and coproduction of observational data. Furthermore, increasing capacity, regional collaboration and cooperation, gender and youth inclusivity, as well as closing funding and RI financing gaps were identified as vital to the sustainability of envisaged RIs.