The final KADI knowledge-exchange workshop took place in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, from 12th–15th August 2025, bringing together over 15 early-career scientists and PhD students from across Africa, along with local participants from Tanzania.
Framed as a hands-on training event, the workshop focused on open geospatial data, low-cost tools, and participatory approaches for urban climate services in Africa. Teams from the KADI city pilots in Abidjan, Nairobi, and Dar es Salaam led the workshop and shared their experiences through presentations, field visits, and practical exercises, while exchanging knowledge between the participants.
Highlights
Field immersion in Kigogo and Tandale: Participants engaged directly with community members in Dar es Salaam’s informal settlements, witnessing first-hand the challenges of flooding, heat stress, poor air quality and insufficient urban infrastructure and services. In addition, a low-cost participatory mapping solution for mapping thermal comfort was tested on-site.
Co-creating climate services: Through interactive group work, participants designed context-specific services for African cities, such as early warning systems. The co-creation simulation was run by the Kenya Meteorological Department team with a systematic approach from understanding the local context, mapping stakeholders, and conducting a rapid climate service design.
Hands-on training: Practical sessions introduced open-source tools like PARTIMAP and QGIS analysis, enabling participants to design participatory surveys and analyze local participatory mapping data from KADI Dar es Salaam pilot on community members’ climate stressor experiences.
Networking and exchange: The workshop fostered connections among researchers and practitioners across Africa, strengthening the foundation for future collaborations.
Rapid climate service co-creation simulation by Patricia Nying’uro and Christine Mahonga (Kenya Meteorological Department) urged workshop participants to tie their expertise from different backgrounds together. Photo: Godfrey Kassano
Day 1: Orientation at Ardhi University
Presentations introduced the KADI project, city pilot cases, and climate risks in urban Africa, click to the links below to access the presentation slides. Participants shared their own experiences, comments, and insightful views on orientation presentations. Most lively discussion was triggered by a presentation by one of the participants regarding their innovative, low-cost participatory mapping solution.
“The simple tools available to collect data are often more powerful than complex applications that take lots of time and expertise.” – Patricia Mwangi, Kenyatta University
During a full-day walking tour in Tandale and Kigogo wards of Dar es Salaam, participants observed climate and urban fabric induced challenges, engaged with community members, and tested a participatory mapping solution in action.
“Local people best understand how they are affected by floods and what solutions serve them most effectively.” – Selma Ndeshimona Iilonga, University of Namibia
Visit to Tandale and Kigogo wards provided a sunny break from the office. With good walking shoes on, the day was full of conversations, sharing experiences, and building understanding on the realities of climate risk effects on urban communities. Photos: Handsome Bongani Nyoni
Day 3: Co-creation and stakeholder event
On day three, a design exercise on climate services highlighted the importance of engaging diverse actors. It was followed by KADI’s final stakeholder meeting and a social evening at barbeque dinner, music and dance.
“Citizen science plays a crucial role in shaping sustainable solutions.” – Fidele Mwizerwa, University of Rwanda
Day 4: Practical training and wrap-up
On the final day, participants built participatory mapping surveys, explored participatory data analysis with QGIS, and tested KADI’s research infrastructure blueprint before closing with certificates and reflections. Click here to access the participant mapping tool presentation.
“I was inspired by practical sessions on mapping urban climate stressors, which demonstrated how technical tools can be adapted for community use.” – Andrew Okello, MEARL Hub Afrika, Uganda
Vastness of workshop participants’ technical skill and availability of data across African regions became concretely visible as participants listed data sources, tools and software they use in their own work. Photo: Venla Aaltonen
Looking forward
The workshop concluded with the launch of a Community of Practice (CoP) for Urban Climate Services in Africa. This network will continue knowledge sharing, collaborative project design, and joint efforts to scale up practical, community-centered climate solutions across African cities. If you wish to join this network, please reach out to us: info(at)kadi-project.eu
“Together everyone achieves more.” – Handsome Bongani Nyoni, Midlands State University of Zimbabwe
Managing climate risks in cities call for efforts to build climate resilient urban infrastructure: Ensuring good drainage of rainfall water, taking care of natural rivers and streams, protecting and increasing urban greenery, and building with climate-safe materials and techniques. Photo: Andrew Okello
The Marseille Declaration “Strengthening Europe-Africa Cooperation on Climate Change Adaptation” was adopted during the Climate Chance Europe-Africa Summit held on March 31st and April 1st, 2025, organised by the City of Marseille and the NGO Climate Chance. As an organising partner and signatory of the Marseille Declaration, ICOS ERIC affirmed its commitment to making high-quality data a foundation for equitable, global climate action.
Bringing together 1500 participants from over 40 countries across Africa and Europe, representing a wide range of non-state actors, the Climate Chance Europe-Africa summit dedicated several of its sessions to reinforcing cooperation with Africa on the crucial issue of climate adaptation.
Collectively drafted, the Marseille Declaration is the first detailed roadmap ever established to strengthen this collaboration. It emphasizes in particular:
– Scientific cooperation
– Financial mobilisation and easier access to dedicated tools
– The key role of local action and forms of housing
– The importance of economic actors and their networking
– Solutions combining mitigation and adaptation, such as nature-based solutions.
KADI project goals align closely with the Marseille Declaration
KADI aligns closely with the principles outlined in the Marseille Declaration, as both emphasise the need for strengthened adaptation policies, enhanced Europe-Africa cooperation, inclusive stakeholder engagement in climate resilience efforts and a stronger voice for Africa.
KADI supports the integration of scientific knowledge into policy frameworks. This aligns with the Marseille Declaration’s emphasis on enhancing adaptation strategies in Europe and Africa through evidence-based policymaking.
KADI fosters cross-continental collaboration using African and European expertise and related networks.
KADI’s knowledge-sharing component contributes to the exchange of best practices, mirroring the Declaration’s goal of strengthening cooperation.
KADI engages with different stakeholders. The involvement of scientists, businesses, civil society, and local authorities in adaptation strategies is also highlighted by the Marseille Declaration. KADI relies on co-creation, ensuring that local communities and contexts are involved in designing solutions.
KADI supports training, ensuring that scientific and non-scientific communities are well-informed and climate-adaptive. This aligns with the Declaration’s push for grassroots engagement in adaptation efforts.
“By linking scientific excellence with real-world examples and co-design in the KADI Project, ICOS ERIC supports stronger collaboration between Europe and Africa, and helps ensure that climate policies are grounded in trusted, long-term observation systems,” states KADI project manager Dr. Theresia Bilola. “The Climate Chance Observatory tracks African climate action, while KADI – led by ICOS ERIC – builds towards the observation network to support these actions. Together, they form a pipeline from local observation to continental cooperation and global policy relevance,” Theresia adds.
In a context marked by a sharp decline in public development aid, it was essential for stakeholders engaged in climate issues to speak out, reaffirming both the urgency of the situation and the challenges we must collectively confront. We firmly believe that in a world under strain, cooperation and solidarity are essential responses to prevent the multiplication of conflicts and crises.
Welcome to the webinar “Bridging Data and Action: Leveraging Greenhouse Gas Research to Drive Policies and Renewable Energy in Africa” on 29th January 2025, 11:00-13:00 CET. This webinar is jointly organised by LEAP-RE programme and the KADI project and is aimed at EU-funded projects addressing climate-related topics in Africa.
The LEAP-RE programme and the KADI project represent pivotal initiatives in tackling climate change and advancing renewable energy solutions across Africa. This webinar explores the intersection of these efforts, highlighting how data-driven strategies can guide policies and innovations critical to achieving sustainable energy and climate service goals. Click here to register.
KADI project facilitating the clustering activities in LEAP RE: Climate change cluster
KADI (Knowledge and climate services from an African Data and research Infrastructure) is a follow up Horizon Europe project to a previous ICOS-coordinated Horizon 2020 project, SEACRIFOG. In SEACRIFOG, the aim was to carry out a conceptual study of what a greenhouse gas observation network in Africa could look like in order to meet the needs of decision-makers, particularly in terms of food security. One of the results of the project was an exhaustive inventory of all GHG measurements that already exist on the African continent (https://seacrifog.saeon.ac.za/).
The KADI project extends the objective of SEACRIFOG, but with a slightly ‘reversed’ approach. The starting point is the analysis and definition of the needs expressed in terms of climate services, to deduce what needs to be measured (and how) to obtain a scientifically robust co-designed climate service. The project includes 4 pilots to test these approaches:
Cities pilot focusing on challenges specific to urban environments, such as air quality and heat resilience, with Abidjan, Nairobi and Dar-es-Salaam as pilot cities.
Coastal Southern Ocean Biogeochemistry pilot, focusing on an area of the world that is particularly important in terms of climate change, but which is also particularly under-observed. The pilot is quantifying key components of the coastal carbon cycle that are relevant to the regulation of climate change and focuses on carbon cycling and other greenhouse gas measurements.
African Earth System model pilot aimed at improving a climate model and adapting it to the African context. This entails parameterisations of land-surface characteristics and land-atmosphere fluxes in an Earth System Model.
Pilot focused on lessons learned from existing collaboration on long-term atmospheric and ecosystem observations by MET services. In this pilot, KADI assesses the value and derives lessons-learned from the existing long-term climate and atmospheric composition observations provided by national meteorological services, using the collaboration between the Kenyan Meteorological Department with its Swiss counterpart, MeteoSwiss as a case study.
The project also includes a ‘policy cooperation’ dimension, in which the contribution to the Africa-Europe strategy plays an essential role, and an ‘knowledge exchange and training’ component for African and European researchers.
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).
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.
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.
The KADI project envisions the development of knowledge and co-production of climate services through an African observation and data research infrastructure. Within this framework, the project team in Kenya organised a workshop to bring together stakeholders of weather and climate information provided by the Kenya Meteorological Department for a discussion on how to understand user needs with the aim of co-producing better climate services.
Assessing weather and climate information use in Kenya
The impacts of climate change in Kenya cannot be ignored. Agriculture, a cornerstone of the economy, is particularly vulnerable with climate variability leading to reduced crop yields, food insecurity, and economic instability, especially in arid and semi-arid regions. Water resources are also under threat as changing rainfall patterns affect the availability of freshwater resources. Rising temperatures contribute to the spread of vector-borne diseases like malaria, impacting public health. Additionally, frequent floods and landslides damage infrastructure, disrupt transportation networks, and affect energy production. The Country’s demand for climate services is increasing and becoming more sophisticated, requiring improved technologies and approaches.
According to the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics Economic survey 2024, some key sectors contributing to the Kenyan economy are Agriculture, Construction, Energy, Environment and Natural resources, Health, ICT, Money, Banking and Finance, Transport, Education and training, Tourism, Governance and peace security, Social and Economic. These sectors are vulnerable to climate variance and providing climate information to support decision making will reduce the expected impact to these sectors and overall cushion the economy from adverse shocks. Representation from these sectors was viewed as a key to achieving the workshops objectives.
KADI and its KMD team organised a workshop to bring together various users of climate information services.
The workshop objectives were:
Assess weather and climate use through a survey
Identify gaps in weather and information use
Document weather and climate services in Kenya
With a main mission to improve the uptake of national climate services, the workshop’s intent was also to develop coordination between actors and stakeholders along the country’s climate services value chain. The envisioned value chain includes observations networks & monitoring systems, user interface platforms, research, modelling and prediction, climate services information systems, and capacity building.
Participants for the workshop were drawn from a pool of frequent users of climate information (both forecast and ground data) from the National weather service, Kenya Meteorological Department. Organisation representatives from key sectors in the country were also present.
The feedback received formed a basis of evaluating the service provided, the gaps experienced and recommendations and suggestions to improve the products and services provided by KMD.
Summary of workshop findings
All the participants acknowledged the importance of climate information in their operations. In agriculture for example, weather forms a critical part of their planning from advising farmers on planting weeding to harvest and storage of food including crop insurance. For livestock farming weather assists in fodder availability, destock and input storage. Data as an input is crucial in producing climate information.
Review and recommendation for future expansions of the observation system
Sectors showed support in collaborating to improve and expand the national observation network and system. The energy sector confirmed hosting automatic weather stations at their plants and sites. An expansive station network provides critical data useful for producing climate information. Most participants were agreeable to hosting of observing stations and collaborations in sharing of data.
Requirements for environmental research infrastructure
All participants admitted to the changing climate being a concern in their operations. Most organizations are already setting up climate units to improve the take up of climate information provided by the National Meteorological Service. These units require openly available weather /climate data, capacity building, software and hardware support to enhance their sector specific research.
Emerging frontiers in climate information
Investment in research on new technologies such as cloud seeding. What are the possibilities and impacts of such technology in the climate arena. There is also demand for accessible data and information on pollution and GHG.
Climate projections and simulations into various sectors e.g. financial and health sectors. Such data should be available in a relatively ingestible format.
Conversion of weather data into sector specific implications and use. E.g. Can rainfall data be incorporated into intensity. Sectors can support KMD in knowing what data they want.
Research infrastructure involves both soft and hard infrastructure; appreciating social and cultural dimensions in the changing face of science.
Lessons learned
Participants appreciated the hybrid format of the workshop. Those unable to travel to the venue could still participate.
The Kenya Meteorological Department will coordinate a system that supports the sharing of information and feedback.
Appreciation for the success of the workshop goes to:
TheKADI Project Consortium
The Director of the Kenya Meteorological Department
Kenya Meteorological Department KADI Team:
Mr. Kennedy Thiongo
Dr. Geoffrey Ogutu
Ms. Patricia Nyinguro HSC
Dr. Joyce Kimutai
Ms. Christine Mahonga
The key organisations who accepted the workshop invitation and sent their representatives.
Earlier in April 2024, KADI partners from the Resilience Academy visited the premises of Finnish Meteorological Institute (FMI) in Helsinki. The FMI is housed on the same building as the ICOS Head Office, therefore this was the ideal opportunity to hear about the FMI’s activities in Africa as well as share ICOS’ work in KADI. The meeting began with an introduction to the work done in ICOS and the work done in KADI. This was followed by presentation of the different projects represented.
The Finnish Meteorological Institute’s regional project FINKERAT aims to increase East African societies’ preparedness for extreme weather events and to improve air quality monitoring in Kenya, Rwanda and Tanzania. The project aims to increase the capacity of meteorological institutes in Kenya, Rwanda and Tanzania to provide more efficient and timely weather forecasts, early warning services and air quality services for the benefit of communities, administrative institutions, the economy and political decision-makers. It develops community-based early warning systems and proactive approaches together with the Finnish Red Cross and the Red Cross Societies in Kenya, Rwanda and Tanzania.
The Climate Risk and Early Warning Systems (CREWS) initiative is a financial mechanism which funds projects in the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) and Small Island Developing States (SIDS) to establish risk-informed early warning services. CREWS is coordinated by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and includes Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, South Sudan and Uganda. CREWS works directly with countries to increase the availability of and access to early warning systems.
Based on the discussions and presentations, the possible areas of collaboration are:
Encourage the uptake of KADI’s approach by the WMO. For example by showcasing the Resilience Academy’s approach to climate services and citizen science
Develop a common curriculum for climate science.
Seek collaboration with the DARAJA project. The aim of the DARAJA project is to co-produce weather and climate information services, which are particularly relevant to urban informal settlement communities in Tanzania (Dar es Salaam) and Kenya (Nairobi).
Joint initiatives for scaling up or broadening successful African climate services.
Plan for joint activities, for instance at the next KADI Annual meeting.
It has been estimated that improved weather and climate services, and early warning systems may benefit up to 130 million people (directly and indirectly). KADI project is committed to the development of climate services in Africa and to the collaboration with other projects and initiatives in this field.
In this report, we highlight the stakeholder engagement and partnerships of the Abidjan City Pilot in terms of the roles, resources and expertise that would be useful for the pilot.
In this pilot, the climate service that will be designed is a particulate pollution warning system through a PM2.5 measurements network and an effective communication in collaboration with stakeholders and the local population, using a participatory approach. The stakeholder engagements are related to the different actors who would contribute to this. The pilot will make use of continuous measurements of atmospheric particles (PM2.5 PM10, OC and BC) and gases (SO2, NH3, NO2, O3 and HNO3) at various sites. Three measuring devices (CairNET) have been acquired to reinforce the measurement sites, but several instruments are needed to cover the whole city of Abidjan. The stakeholders who will contribute to setting up the climate service have been identified. Discussions have been started with some of them, including INHP (Institut National d’Hygiène Publique), CIAPOL (Centre Ivoirien Anti-Pollution), SODEXAM (Société d’Exploitation et de Développement Aéroportuaire, Aéronautique et Météorologie) and ANAGED (Agence Nationale de Gestion des déchets). These discussions focus on protocols for co-designing the climate service and on what is expected from the stakeholders. In addition, there are already measurements of particulate matter (PM2.5) and a pollutant dispersion model to be used.
Meeting the representatives of Institut National d’Hygiène Publique (INHP)
In the beginning of February, the KADI team in Abidjan met with the Deputy-director of INHP under the Ministry of Health and Public Hygiene and the discussions focused on the approach and pilot sites.
Abidjan team meeting INHP (Institut National d’Hygiène Publique) representatives
The participatory approach involves interacting and working with the inhabitants, local communities and administrative bodies on the project. The INHP trains public health workers to strengthen the system and administers a questionnaire to patients when they visit the health centres. The INHP has a sociological and scientific database as part of the projects piloted by public health in all the dispensaries and CHUs (University Hospital Centres) in the Cocody municipality. This database will be made available to the KADI team and updated with pollution-related aspects.
For this city pilot collaboration, the chosen site is the municipality of Bingerville. It is representative of the city of Abidjan, with high-standard houses as well as precarious neighbourhoods. The KADI team and the INHP team have already carried out several projects on this site.
Strengthening the partnership with Centre Ivoirien Anti-Pollution (CIAPOL)
Later in February, the KADI team met with CIAPOL, which oversees the monitoring air quality in Côte d’Ivoire. The discussions focused on the existing partnership with CIAPOL on the monitoring and evaluation of the National Observation Network of Côte d’Ivoire. The CIAPOL team and the KADI team at the UFHB are also working on other projects such as POLLUMETRE, Sustainable Cities and PTUA. CIAPOL can provide data on air pollution in the industrial sector. The UFHB team can merge the data sources to have a more complete database. CIAPOL will also help in the field with the technical aspects of questionnaires and meetings with local people. They will also contribute to dissemination as the national body responsible for air quality. The meeting was followed by the signing of an official letter of agreement for the collaboration.
The KADI Abidjan team meeting CIAPOL
Collaboration with SOCEXAM (Société d’Exploitation et de Développement Aéroportuaire, Aéronautique et Météorologie) on pollution and heatwave modelling
SODEXAM was another one of the stakeholders with whom the Abidjan team met in February. It is the Airport, Aeronautics and Meteorological Operating and Development Company in Côte d’Ivoire. It is responsible for national meteorology, airport operation and development, air navigation and aviation.
The discussion with KADI focused on the climatic and meteorological data needed for our pollutant dispersion monitoring model. Based on SODEXAM’s long experience, the model to be used for air quality forecasting was also discussed. SODEXAM is already providing forecasts on heatwaves in Abidjan which will be a valuable experience to inform the climate service design. The meeting was followed by the signing of a collaboration agreement.
The KADI team at SODEXAM
Tackling residential pollution awareness with ANAGED
ANAGED (Agence Nationale de Gestion des Déchets) was one of the stakeholders with whom the KADI Abidjan team connected. ANAGED oversees the measures to control and sanction residential pollution. The KADI partners met with directors and their teams, including the Heads of operations, monitoring, regulating, sanctioning and managing all solid wastes, and communication.
The KADI Team in discussion with ANAGED
The discussion focused on the identification of the different sources of pollution, mainly the residential and domestique sources. ANAGED agreed to help ensure and take adequate measures and provide evidence of residential pollution. They could help raise awareness of the population on residential pollution and the behavior to adopt to reduce the risk. They could also support the participatory approach and facilitate meetings and interactions with the city inhabitants.
In February 2024, a research article on the African Regional Greenhouse Gases Budget (2010–2019) by Yolandi Ernst and colleagues was published in Global Biochemical Cycles. As part of the Regional Carbon Cycle Assessment and Processes Phase 2 (RECCAP2) initiative of the Global Carbon Project, the paper addresses the policy-relevant objectives of RECCAP2 through a comprehensive overview of improved estimates of CO2, CH4, and N2O fluxes and variability.
The authors show that Africa’s sink capacity is decreasing and that the continent most likely switched from a small net sink to a small net source during the 2010–2019 period. The authors also stressed the importance of more observations to improve the large uncertainties in their estimates.
Currently, Africa is home to approximately 1.4 billion people, with projections indicating a population surge to over 2 billion by 2040. This dramatic increase necessitates extensive land conversion for agricultural production to feed the growing populace and drive economic growth. Concurrently, heavy utilisation of land for grazing, fuelwood, and other natural resources further strains the continent’s ecosystems. There is significant global interest in leveraging African landscapes to store carbon and offset global carbon emissions. However, these efforts are complicated by the competing demands for land and resources.
Understanding Africa’s shifting role in the global carbon cycle requires robust data on carbon-cycle processes and greenhouse gas emissions to accurately quantify the net impact of these competing trends. The full article can be read here.
Some additional perspectives of the KADI Project on carbon markets
A reduction of anthropogenic emissions or a measure to create a carbon sink can be traded. However, it is important to respect some principles. Namely, there must be efforts to create an additional sink that would not be there otherwise. In addition, the sink must be sustained after the measure has ended with monitoring and verification by independent observations.
KADI builds the foundation for an integrated climate observation network. Independent observations cannot be paid for by single projects but require separate funding (e.g. generated as a fee from each certificate). Independent observations (including models) are needed in the certification system.
Finally, we believe verification of the success of a measure will help avoid fraud and support the development of integrated climate services that underpin solutions with co-benefits and respective policies and initiatives.
One of the objectives of the KADI project is to support AU-EU policy cooperation. This involves liaising with other AU-EU projects or initiatives.
At the end of January 2024, KADI met with the African Union Commission to discuss collaboration with the GMES and Africa project. GMES and Africa is for the development of services for water, natural resources, marine and coastal areas, addressing the global needs to manage the environment, and ensure civil security. GMES and Africa is made up of 8 consortia covering 5 regions involving 167 African institutions.
During the meeting, we identified the areas of collaboration in the AU-EU framework are policy, services development, training and knowledge management. Connection through these areas is possible as both projects include these components. For example, the GMES and Africa project includes an academic network of 28-32 African Universities. This type of collaboration will be mutually beneficial for the training components in both projects (and beyond) in terms of knowledge exchange and dissemination related to training opportunities.
In relation to cooperation and knowledge exchange, KADI actively participated in the webinar to commemorate the International Women’s Day 2024. The event was organised on March 7th by Women in GMES and Africa with the theme, ‘African women at the heart of climate action’.
“In its bid to enhance the opportunities from combining satellite and in-situ earth observation data in Africa, KADI actively engages with different actors and initiatives that focus on these.” said Dr. Theresia Bilola, the project manager of KADI. “Engaging with GMES and Africa presents an opportunity to strengthen and support AU-EU cooperation in earth observation using approaches that recognise and benefit from new and already existing expertise”, she added.
We are looking forward to more collaboration in the upcoming months though:
Connecting the training components of both projects for collaboration.
Collaborating in relation to the regional, continental and thematic workshops.
Inviting, participating and disseminating information about both projects.
Collaborating on the GMES and Africa joint workshop which targets a variety of stakeholders in relation to land use, water, natural resources, policy makers and service users.
KADI Dar es Salaam stakeholder workshop gathered together 25 participants from various backgrounds. The workshop day was not just full of dialogue, but also good food, laughter, team building activities, brief presentations, and new connections.
One of the KADI project aims is to co-design climate services for urban context in three African cities – Abidjan, Nairobi, and Dar es Salaam. The goal is to enhance resilience against climate stressors. In the Dar es Salaam city pilot, the focus is on designing climate service for citizens for coping with current and future impacts of heavy precipitation, extreme heat, and air pollution (Figure 1).
Figure 1. Validating flood, air pollution and extreme heat hotspots, and discussing their causes during focus group discussion in Kigogo ward, Dar es Salaam. Image: Venla Aaltonen
Led by the University of Turku (UTU), Finland and Ardhi University (ARU), Dar es Salaam, the climate service design has grounds on a community-based approaches to ensure the development of a climate service with genuine potential for sustainable uptake by citizens and other actors involved in climate-related activities within the city. The design builds on the existing Tanzanian Resilience Academy approach where students from local universities, together with community members, collect crucial data on climate stressors, their impacts, city’s vulnerabilities, the urban infrastructure, and the environment using low-cost mobile tools.
Community focus group discussion and participatory mapping
To address the true needs of the urban communities, initial activities of the pilot focused on engaging relevant actors – especially the citizens – to discuss concrete needs for climate action and access to climate information. Two focus group discussions were conducted on February 6th and 7th in Tandale and Kigogo wards, both frequently experiencing floods, extreme heat, and air pollution.
Prior these discussions a participatory mapping campaign was conducted in October 2023, revealing valuable information not previously recorded regarding the spatial occurrence of poor air quality, extreme heat, and floods, which were used as a basis for the focus group discussions. The participatory mapping campaign was conducted by ARU students who had previously attended Resilience Academy data collection activities.
Figure 2. Map visualisation of air pollution experiences of Tandale community members. The experiences were collected via participatory mapping campaign, and the mapped hotspots reveal e.g. unofficial dumping sites where waste is burned, as well as areas where liquid waste runs due to lack of proper drainage systems. Image: Venla Aaltonen
As it is evident that the climate itself – high temperatures or amount of precipitation – cannot be changed, the focus group discussions highlighted that the communities’ needs for adapting to and coping with climate stressors are tied to improved urban planning. Issues such as proper solid waste management to prevent drainage blockage and flooding emerged as crucial. Lack of proper waste management also leads to continuous burning of solid waste which is a constant source for air pollution and additional heat in the neighbourhoods. In addition to solid waste management, the communities emphasized the importance of overall better urban infrastructure, including improved drainage networks, liquid waste management, regulations on land building, flood barrier construction, and better management of the natural rivers flowing through the wards.
Most importantly, the discussions underscored the significance of transferring local knowledge to formats interoperable with existing and new climate data, and urban plans. The KADI Dar es Salaam city pilot concentrates on this very element where the vast local knowledge could be integrated in creating actionable climate services that combine climate information with contextual neighbourhood-level information for genuine and sustainable transformation.
Stakeholder workshop
The stakeholder workshop that followed the focus group discussions was held on February 9th and involved representatives from citizen communities, academia, the Tanzanian Meteorological Agency, ward-level environmental offices, and urban planners (Figure 3). The workshop delved deeper into concrete steps for meeting community needs, emphasizing collaborative efforts of the governmental offices and the local communities. Solving the urban planning challenges for improved climate resilience require a lot of human resources, time, money, political will, and data and information of the occurrence and impacts of climate stressors in the city.
Figure 3. Stakeholder workshop participants engaging in discussion of concrete steps for addressing challenges introduced by climate stressors in Dar es Salaam neighbourhoods. Image: Epvate & Fortune International Consulting
For example, the following questions were discussed:
What are concrete steps that needs to be taken to meet communities’ needs?
Who are needed to carry out these steps?
What data or information must be collected, and what is already existing
What immediate actions could be taken, and which are more long-term goals?
As another important discussion note, the workshop highlighted challenges in the information flow from the Tanzanian Meteorological Agency to communities regarding climate-related warnings (Figure 4). Discussions centred on improving this flow which currently is time-consuming or behind a paywall. Communities suggest the involvement of local informants who could communicate the situations in neighborhood-level in real time, which aids TMA in down-scaling forecasts, warnings, and climate projections to be more useful to communities in different parts of the city.
Figure 4. Stakeholder workshop participants discussing the problems and desired solutions for climate information accessibility from official sources, such as the Tanzanian Meteorological Agency. Image: Venla Aaltonen
Final note from the perspective of execution of the workshop is a shoutout for the ice-breaking exercise that initiated the day. Participants discussed and listed challenges they meet in their daily lives (not only climate-related!) on post-it notes (Figure 5). During breakfast break, the challenges were clustered to thematic groups, and after the break each challenge was discussed and marked whether they are somehow related to climate, urban planning, or both. Almost each challenge mentioned were definitely related to both, and many of the challenges were also heavily interconnected. This initial ice-breaker exercise was aimed to take maximum 20 minutes – just to get conversation flowing – but ended up taking much more time and laid solid ground for the rest of the day. The success of this approach is credited to the KADI WP1 Wits team for their valuable advice, and we can highly recommend similar approach for other stakeholder/actor workshops coming along the KADI project.
Figure 5. Ice-breaker exercise initiated a lively discussion on the causes and effects of different challenges the workshop participants face in their everyday life. Power cuts, overcrowding, chaotic traffic, floods, unstable food prices, poor solid waste management, unofficial sewage discharge, diseases, thefts, and heat inside houses are all connected to climate stressors or urban planning issues, but often to both. Image: Venla Aaltonen
Lessons learned and next steps
Looking back to organising this workshop, there are things we would do differently. We did include three presentation slots to the day to introduce the KADI project, climate service concepts, and the activities we had done prior the workshop. However, kicking off the day, conducting the ice-breaker exercise, having food breaks, and discussing the intended themes took much longer than anticipated. These things were important, and giving them time was purposeful, and thus presenting so many slideshows could have been organised with another approach. Also, not everyone invited to the workshop arrived. This was somewhat managed by inviting two individuals from desired organisations, and at least one representative arrived from each organisation, except from the city’s disaster risk management office, and from an NGO with expertise in community development and participatory mapping.
From now as the KADI Dar es Salaam city pilot progresses, the research team design a climate service concept that incorporates local knowledge to the whole lifecycle of the climate service. The Tanzanian Resilience Academy approach, involving local students in data collection, is a potential avenue, but various community-based methods are also incorporated to the design, such as citizen weather stations (CWS) and participatory online platforms for information sharing.
We want to give a sincere thank you for everyone who have been part of our activities during these last months. The communities’ views on climate and other everyday challenges are often asked, and the most pressing issues in the neighbourhoods are known. However, concrete actions are lacking behind. Climate services are not the sole solution in solving the challenges, but they are an important building block for data-driven and knowledge-based collaborative action by various actors in the local context, and give tools for climate adaptation for the urban communities.
All these activities were carried out by our KADI Dar es Salaam climate service city pilot research team:
Venla Aaltonen
University of Turku
voaaal@utu.fi
Dr. Nelly Babere
Ardhi University
gathiharry@gmail.com
Urgent need for Research Infrastructures and Climate Services in Africa
