The Last Mile: Uganda Towards the Finish Line

Uganda President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, releases a weather balloon at UNMA Stall in Jinja. Before him in a black jacket is Dr. Robert K. Rutaagi.

UNMA is working hard at bridging the last mile with the help of the private sector and civil society.

By Dr. Robert K. Rutaagi, Chairperson of the UNMA Board

Since the CIRDA Team, led by Project Manager Bonizella Biagini, blew the whistle in Livingstone to launch the workshop The Last Mile, the Uganda National Meteorological Authority (UNMA) has been sprinting towards the finish line. As we traveled to Livingstone, braving both distance and the clock, the  ride became more enjoyable, courtesy not only of the beautiful Zambian geography and climate but also to the rich subject matter being discussed. We were provided more time to deeply reflect upon the workshop agenda that was focused on identifying the means and messages needed to communicate climate information to vulnerable communities.

The trip to and from Livingstone and the debates that arose from the regional workshop allowed for my delegation to quickly formulate a package of nine recommendations to move Uganda towards the finish line in looking to bridge the Last Mile. These included:

• Working for the distribution of hydro meteorological information through efficient and effective channels like schools, churches, Rotary Fraternities, Police and media (among others)
• Simplifying the message by translating technical meteorological terminologies into simpler and better understandable language. 
• Exploring opportunities for partnering with private sector companies such as Fit Uganda and others to disseminate weather and climate information.
• Working towards unpacking weather data and tailoring it for different audiences depending on the needs and the devices used by end users.
• Guide UNMA's Expatriate Technical Advisor to analyze all available raw materials/resources including Consultancy Reports, to develop practical and implementable follow up actions.
• Arrange an urgent meeting between the UNMA and the Office of the Prime Minister (OPM) Department of Relief, Disaster Preparedness and Management to harmonize issues of intersecting mandates in the generation and dissemination of climate and weather information.
• Invite CIRDA Experts to visit to both agencies (UNMA and OPM), evaluate the technical environment for early warning systems and review the design for automatic weather stations (AWS) that includes the option to host in school premises as well as to provide support in arranging a national workshop to bring together national stake holders involved in communicating climate and weather information. 
• Bring the Climate Action Hackathon to Uganda through a Ugandan Hackathon Sattelite Group that will include brilliant, dynamic and highly self motivated ICT-survey youths from higher institutions of learning like Makerere University and its Business School, Uganda Technology and Management University, Kyambogo University, among others.
• An increased focus on downscaled weather product dissemination to provide an important building block for the product development needed by the Country.

To begin to enact these strategies, UNMA and the UNDP/GEF/SCIEWS Project organized national stakeholders through a Forum that took place from 20-23 June, 2016 in Entebbe. The Stakeholder Forum had among its objectives to identify the opportunities for partnering with the private sector for the dissemination of weather and climate information as well as to visualize the potential for product development.

Participants to the Uganda Stakeholder Forum

The workshop was well attended by local, regional and international stakeholders from public, private, civil society, international development partners and NGOs. While time and space will not permit me to delve into greater details of all that transpired, I will endeavor to articulate the pertinent outputs and outcomes of the event that both prove testament to the hard work being developed by the UNMA as well as its vision in moving forward and reaching the Last Mile:

• UNMA has become more accurate, with its accuracy levels rising from 50% (2014) to 80% (June 2016). This has been validated by both ACCRA and World Vision which has used the information with Ugandan farmers and has found it to be "commendable" (ACCRA UNMA & MWF: The Climate Forecast Model, 2016).
• Based on the information generated and shared during the Forum, UNMA has or is en route to enter into several Memorandums of Understanding (MOU) with significant stakeholders. These include the Uganda National Road Authority and the Uganda National Farmers Association. While entering into formal PPPs will require harmonization, refinement and expedition in terms of commercialization prospects, these issues are well noted and will be addressed. We have appreciated the work realized by the CIRDA Team through its own market study in bringing to light the various challenges that will be faced.
• UNMA now has some local (FIT Uganda Ltd) and international (aWhere, HNI, etc.) partners ready to improve its dissemination of weather and climate information products through radio stations on mutually agreed upon terms, including pro bono (free) ones. All that is required is the training of the radio station staff in presentation techniques, good public relations and marketing. 
• UNMA will urgently plan to conduct an in-depth study on the contribution of meteorological services on Uganda's GDP. Once completed, it will assist UNMA in mobilizing the much needed resources to develop the requisite infrastructure on her other operations as well as her corporate image. 
• An SCIEWS Application Programming Interface (API) has emerged with an imminent capacity to "enable smoother PPPs, rapid end user application development and sustainable weather and climate solutions for Uganda" (ref. PPP Forum main report 20-23 June, 2016).
• UNMA also took note of the urgent need to review its organizational structure, especially the need to create an independent Aeronautical Division/Dept to handle its strategic aeronautical services which have the highest potential to internally generate revenue for the Authority and augment the insufficient Government funding. 
• The need to re-brand UNMA was a recurring topic and a basic output of the Forum. Much will depend on it being seen as an efficient and effective service delivery of meteorological services to end-users. 

All conversations, during the Last Mile from Livingstone to the PPP Forum in Entebbe seem to suggest that Uganda, as she approaches the finish line, is in fact becoming ever more conducive towards creating the PPP partnerships needed to communicate climate and weather information and do so in a manner that can become sustainable in the long term. As if to validate the above conclusion, soon after the PPP Forum UNMA was invited to participate in the annual Uganda National Farmers Agricultural Show in Jinja. UNMA's performance was excellent and its stall became the center of much attraction and had the distinction of being twice visited by Presider Yoweri Museveni. His enthusiasm in the event spurred him to personally launch and release UNMA's weather balloon and provide much attention to the relevant and exciting work being developed by UNMA.

Let the negotiations begin: How met agencies can share revenues generated by private sector companies

By Anthony Mills

We all know that good data – and an improved understanding of the market – makes for good decisions. In order to understand the nuanced intricacies of the weather services market – and potential revenue streams that could be generated through agreements with private-sector companies – we decided to look at what the data told us. This meant taking on a major cross-continental market study to better understand the market for such services, its pitfalls, potentials, challenges and opportunities.

The need for such market data and information was clear. In an earlier blog post, I wrote that “More information…is needed on how meteorological agencies can commercialize part of their operations and on how met agencies can add value to their existing information so that it can be sold.

“Questions also exist regarding the use of potential income streams and on whether these would be enough to help agencies maintain and expand their operations. Can mechanisms enabling the flow of funds from the aviation sector to met agencies form a useful precedent? Could mobile phone companies perhaps pay met agencies for valuable and highly tailored information that could then be distributed to their users?”

This questions were followed up with a simple conclusion. “[We] need to establish how the new services that [the met agencies] will be providing can generate revenue streams for the long-term maintenance of the new as well as the existing met equipment and technology.” 

More than a year has passed since this text above was written, and the good news is that the information required is now available. This is because CIRDA commissioned a market study on how the met agencies can capitalize on private-sector opportunities and find mechanisms to increase revenue streams. The results of this study are detailed in an the UNDP’s new Climate and Weather Services Market Assessment - Revenue Generating Opportunities Through Tailored Weather Information Products. 

The extensive report, made possible with financing from the Global Environment Facility's Least Developed Countries Fund, is over 100 pages long. For a snapshot, take a look at the summary. In this blog-post I give you the findings of the study in a nutshell, and in a more informal manner than you will find in the technical report.

A True Market Opportunity

The main finding shining out of the market study was that the met agencies have a remarkable opportunity to be part of a growing, dynamic, large and powerful private-sector market based on tailored weather information products.

In recent decades the availability, diversity, sophistication and use of weather information products generated by private-sector companies has skyrocketed. These companies are increasingly using satellite data to generate their products, but they are always on the look-out to refine their products by using local weather data collected from the ground.

The risk facing the met agencies is that these private companies do not depend on the met agency data for their commercial viability; the data from met agencies is just a “nice thing to have.” Business will go on for these companies, with or without the met agencies. In time, as the private companies get used to running their operations without the met agencies, it is likely to be harder to forge partnerships in the future. Consequently, now is the time for met agencies to seize the opportunity to partner with the private companies.

The weather information market in Africa is still fresh and dynamic. There are gaps to be seized. There are profits to be generated through innovative approaches like the new apps developed at the recent Climate Action Hackathon.

At the moment, accurate, consistent data from on-the-ground met agency weather stations do have value for private weather services companies. Such data can increase the quality of the weather information products, enabling them to charge their customers more.

The private companies will consequently be prepared to share in revenue streams with the met agencies, which in turn increases the long-term financing prospects for the met agencies. Indeed, the global weather information companies aWhere and Speedwell Weather both publically stated their commitments to forging partnerships with African met services at the CIRDA Last Mile Workshop, held March 2016 in Livingstone, Zambia. Both companies agreed that shared revenue streams – as is for example already happening in Brazil – were an option on the table if the data provided by the met agencies was consistent and accurate. It was also noted that the value of the data from the met agencies would be greater if the data from several countries could be pooled together.

Making It Work

Another finding emerging from the study was that generating profits from tailored weather information products is not a straight forward exercise. Like any business, there needs to be a steely focus, a gritty determination, a commitment to extreme quality, laser-like attention to detail, strong skills in technology, marketing and business development, large doses of innovation, a fleet-footed flexibility, and last but not least considerable patience.

It takes many years of time, joules of human energy and millions of dollars to transform the initial idea of the weather information product into a profit-generating revenue stream. In short, this is not for the faint-hearted. Only companies with strong human resources, deep pockets and a lively entrepreneurial mind-set will cut the mustard in this arena.

Take WeatherNews for example: they started out in 1986 in Japan, and today have a staff of over 700 scattered across the world. They specialize in providing tailored weather information to assist businesses in planning their operations. If you are a mining business, or a construction business or a shipping business, for example, you need to know when the storm will hit so that your operations can be adjusted accordingly. It is certainly worth your while paying WeatherNews a lot of money if they provide you with weather information on an hourly basis that you can rely on. Large savings can be made for the customers. WeatherNews of course trades on this. Last year it made US$33 million gross profit.

Companies like WeatherNews are always open to improving their products to increase their profits. This is where met agencies have an “in.” If the met agencies were to provide their data for a relatively low cost (or even for free) to such companies, there are potentially large returns to be gained via revenue-sharing with the companies.

Of course, the met agencies will need to negotiate hard for a fair share of the proceeds, and expert advice will almost certainly be required for such discussions. This is because determining what is “fair” requires a detailed understanding of the weather information market.

If you are wanting to buy a house for example, it is very unlikely that the seller will accept your offer if you come in at 20% of the market value. Met agencies need to do their homework to work out what the market value of their data is on the international market as well as national market, and walk into the negotiations well prepared.

Other steps that the met agencies will potentially need to take prior to stepping into the ring with the private companies include: ensuring that the national legislation allows for revenue-sharing contracts between weather companies and the met agency; expanding their ground observation network to provide sufficient coverage of the country to entice the private companies; and importantly ensuring that they can guarantee consistent and accurate data to the companies.

The met agencies can take heart that they are holding a lot of trump cards when walking into the private company board rooms. They have, for example, archived historical data that is of some value. But the value of historical data is negligible compared with future potential data.

The real trump card the met agencies are holding is that they have a lot of infrastructure on the ground that can generate data that will improve the weather information products in the private sector for many years to come. In this regard: the more data from the ground the better.

One low-hanging fruit for the met agencies is to capitalize on the huge investments that cell phone companies have made into infrastructure across their countries. At each cell phone tower there is electrical power, a strong mobile phone signal for transmitting data, and a sturdy barbed wire fence to protect the equipment. These are the ideal sites for – with relatively little investment – expanding the ground observation network of automatic weather stations and greatly increasing the amount of data to provide to private companies.

The mobile phone towers will affect the data slightly; the tower may for example block the rain from entering a rain gauge for example. But the effects have been shown to be minor and easily corrected. Private companies are certainly going to see tremendous value in such data.

So my parting message to African met agencies is: invest on your mobile phone towers and let the negotiations begin!

Dr. Anthony Mills is the CEO of C4 EcoSolutions – a company of 15 climate change consultants that develop innovative, evidence-based solutions for adapting to climate change. C4 operates in more than forty countries across Asia and Africa. The company’s clients include the International Finance Corporation (IFC), UNEP, IFAD, FAO, CarbonPlus Capital and UNDP.  C4’s work includes designing and implementing adaptation projects and investments in both the public and private sectors. Anthony is also Extraordinary Professor in the Department of Soil Science, University of Stellenbosch. 

Burkina Faso Mission Report

The Burkina Faso Met Service intends to replace their manual stations with AWS.
Synoptic AWS will be installed at 10 manual synoptic stations across the country.

Communication Strategy and Automatic Weather Stations: The Backbone for an Efficient Early Warning System

By Ulrich Diasso

Devastating droughts and floods, inconsistent rain patterns and other extreme weather events are becoming more frequent in the West African nation of Burkina Faso. These events are challenging Burkina’s ability to adapt to climate change and reach development goals.

Improved localized weather observation networks and integrated communication strategies are essential building blocks to improve the nation’s resilience to climate change, create a strong early warning system, foster good decision-making, and protect lives and livelihoods.

Over the past five years, Burkina Faso’s meteorological service has been taking purposeful steps to modernize their observation system. The country recently acquired 150 Adcon Automatic Weather Stations (AWS) and 16 hydrological stations that will fill existing gaps in their monitoring system.

UNDP’s Programme on Climate Information for Resilient Development in Africa (CIRDA) is playing a central role in Burkina’s modernization efforts, offering technical support to the country by helping them to define the technical specifications of new equipment. With 10 new synoptic stations, 40 agro-climatic stations and 100 rain-gauges adding to the mix, Burkina’s hydro-meteorological monitoring system is set to become one of the most substantial in West Africa.

In order to maintain these new systems and ensure proper transmission of early warnings, the Government of Burkina Faso will need to allocate budgetary resources for system maintenance and work with cellphone companies to ensure the automated transfer of data. The Burkina Meteorological Service intends to replace all manual weather and climate monitoring stations with easy-to-maintain Automatic Weather Stations. With support from CIRDA, the Met Service will initiate discussions with local cellphone companies to establish win-win partnerships and reduce the costs of data transfer.

During the recent “Last Mile” workshop in Zambia, the Burkina Faso delegation requested support from the CIRDA programme in building their Standard Operating Protocol (SOP). In response to this request, the April 2016 CIRDA support mission assessed roles and responsibilities, as well as the existing mandates of the various stakeholders involved in Burkina’s Early Warning System. The final goal of the SOP will be to have a common communication platform that involves all the stakeholders, and ensures the effective issuance of early warnings to vulnerable communities across the country.  

The CIRDA support mission also assessed the current status of the project and provided guidance to overcome some persistent challenges. Top recommendations included advice on how to reduce the cost of data transfer via public-private partnerships with telecommunications providers, and the need to review mechanisms for the sustainable maintenance of newly procured monitoring equipment.

An Adcon synoptic automatic weather station installed
at the National Meteorological Service.
Since 2014, 17 AWS are transmitting data
to the met service. Under the CI/EWS project,
150 Adcon AWS will increase coverage up to 70%.

As improved monitoring systems are deployed, the Burkina Met Service will need to integrate the information collected from these stations into forecasts, early warning alerts and other tailored weather products. Ongoing support from the CIRDA programme will include a review of Burkina’s current forecasting system and the finalization of the Terms of Reference for the development of improved forecasting and early warning systems capabilities.

Ulrich Diasso is a Country Support Specialist in Meteorology and Climate Monitoring for the CIRDA programme. Ulrich holds a PhD in Meteorology and Climate Sciences. Besides his role in the CIRDA programme, Ulrich supports climate change assessment at the African Centre of Meteorological Application for Development (ACMAD). He is also member of the Coordinated Regional Climate Downscaling Experiment (CORDEX) group for model evaluation in Africa.

Applied Learning from the UNDP Last Mile Conference in Zambia

Connecting Last Mile Weather and Climate Products to National Hydro-Meteorological Services

The UNDP’s Programme on Climate Information for Resilient Development in Africa (CIRDA) Last Mile Conference in Zambia brought together leading thinkers in both the public and private sectors to discuss how weather and climate information can be applied to save lives and improve livelihoods.

There were discussions on communications, market forces and sector-wide imperatives, application development, enabling policies and more. We’ll be sharing the top lessons learned in a series of ongoing blogs. But it’s important to take a 50,000-foot view of some of the top outcomes of the meeting.

Country Updates

As most Climate Information and Early Warning Systems Projects enter mid-term review, now is a good time to start messaging impact and share important lessons learned. Getting it started, UNDP experts defined the goals of the workshop and the very space that encompasses “The Last Mile,” and country programs presented key takeaways half-way through project implementation. 

• Bonizella Biagini - The Last Mile
• Anthony Mills - Defining the Last Mile
• Pradeep Kurukulasuriya - Adaptation
• John Snow - Opening Remarks

Country Presentations

• Benin
• Burkina Faso
• Gambia
• Malawi
• Sao Tome and Principe
• Tanzania
• Uganda
• Zambia

Climate Action Hackathon

Stories from the Hackathon continue to roll in on the Climate Action Blog as the five teams (and one team forming virtually) continue to scale up, test and improve the applications they developed in Zambia.

“The Hackathon was an incredibly enabling environment for developing tools for climate and weather,” says Knife’s Edge team member Madi-JImba Yahya. “The panel sessions provided good insight into the underlying problems that plague climate issues, and helped Hackathon participants better understand the gaps that exist in the climate and weather industry, and its indirect impact on the public good.”

The Knife’s Edge team worked to develop a promising app that connects agricultural extension workers with a weather information dashboard that they can use to inform local farmers.

“While most of our team had heard about climate change and its impacts on the various sectors of the economy, what surprised us is the crucial role climate and weather information plays, as well as the expansiveness of sectors impacted,” says Teddy Odindo of the Climar Team, who developed a voice-messaging app to share relevant agro-climatic information in local languages.

The Hackathon was a breeding ground for innovation. The five onsite teams worked together to use design thinking principles to drive innovative applications for the sharing of weather and climate data.

“We were also surprised by the level of diversity in terms of skills and experience in our team, ranging from a coding expert, educator, GIS expert and business expert, to a climatologist as well as practitioner in climate change adaptation,” said Odindo. “Lastly, we were amazed by the huge number of companies and people working to bring climate services closer to the people who most need it. There exists a number of opportunities for us to work with other organizations to improve access to climate information.”

As the Hackathon moves into its virtual phase, partners from The Brown Institute for Media Innovations – a bi-coastal collaboration between Stanford’s School of Engineering and Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism – and The International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI) will work with UNDP experts and country partners within National Hydro-Meteorological Services (NHMS) to scale up the innovations and create final products.

3-2-1 Action

With progress reports coming in from the CIRDA-supported Climate Information and Early Warning Systems Projects, one thing in particular stood out. Most countries supported through the CIRDA programme are now very actively engaged with Human Network International’s 3-2-1 service.

“CIRDA is serving as a knowledge broker and partnership builder, connecting innovative enterprises like Human Network International’s 3-2-1 service with National Hydro-Meteorological Services. By fostering these types of partnerships, we are working to take weather and climate data across the last mile,” says CIRDA Programme Manager Bonizella Biagini.

A number of other value-add services presented at the Zambia workshop, providing a new menu of services, service providers and unique approaches that African NHMS and Disaster Management Units can choose from to build tailored weather services and package weather information.

• David McAfee - Last Mile Application Development and Distribution
• Hanneke Schuurmans - Flash Flood Forecasting App
• Beniah Nyakanda - EcoNet's Experiences in Implementing Weather Indexed Insurance in Zimbabwe
• Sharon Onyango - ACRE Africa
• Stewart Collis - aWhere 'The Power of Agriculture Intelligence'
• Joost Hoedjes - Geonetcast
• Edson Nkonde - Last Mile Building Blocks ZMD
• Ari Davidov - Earth Networks
• Cristoph Neudhart - Ubimet
• Andrew Kruczkiewicz - ENACTS

Communications

An entire learning arch was dedicated to communications. During that arch, the CIRDA Programme shared a Communications Toolkit that includes easy-to-navigate templates and strategies to issue early weather alerts, create response mechanisms and assign responsibilities in the early-warnings information chain, and create the supportive advocacy strategies necessary to build the enabling political environments necessary to continue with these important endeavors.

The use of agricultural extension services wasn’t just highlighted by the Hackathon teams, the Zambia Climate Information and Early Warning Systems Project is also looking to leverage extension services in a unique way, by placing information kiosks within agricultural extension offices. As with the design thinking process applied in the Hackathon, good communications starts with an intimate understanding of end-users. On the second day, country programs broke into teams to develop applications and messages based on the communications learning arch, with Burkina Faso and other countries presenting draft strategies to the plenary hall.  

• Greg Benchwick - Integrated Communications Strategies
• Kunda Mwila - CI/EWS Communications Strategy in Zambia
• Arnaud Zannou - Standard Operating Procedure in Benin
• Caelainn Barr - Innovating How We Report on Climate Change
• Jeanne Coulibaly - Lessons Learned From the GFCS On Disseminating CIS to Smallholder Farmers in Malawi and Tanzania

Understanding Market Forces

Two upcoming publications and studies took center stage on the second day of plenary sessions. These included a much-anticipated publication entitled “A New Vision For Weather and Climate Services in Africa” and an in-depth UNDP market study conducted by C4Ecosolutions that is being shared as a draft to gain input and insight from the community of practice as well as NHMS across Africa.

“A New Vision for Weather and Climate Services in Africa” examines the climate information and services space in sub-Saharan Africa, taking a critical look at what hasn’t worked, why it’s important and possible solutions. The report is slated to launch soon. Can’t wait? Here’s a preview.  

The Market Study was conducted across the continent and dives much deeper into end-user needs, demand and market forces both on the supply and demand side of the weather services value chain.

   

This excerpt provides a tantalizing glimpse at the information contained in the report, which was designed as a unique third-party perspective to truly understand the way climate services are developing in sub-Saharan Africa.  

“Where markets for climate and weather information products have developed particularly successfully – e.g. in the USA and the Netherlands – NHMSs have been central to the process. A fundamental role of the NHMSs in these cases has been to provide good quality data and derived products from their extensive observation networks. This has enabled private weather companies to improve both the quality and the quantity of their products and services, and to develop new markets by providing tailored products and services catering to the needs of specific niches. Such government-provided data invariably underpin the growth of the commercial weather market, enabling companies to thrive. Another effect of a flourishing commercial weather market is to increase the status of the NHMS within both the private and public sectors, which in turn facilitates investments by government and the private sector into building the human resource capacity as well as infrastructure of the NHMS.

“This market assessment investigated how flourishing commercial weather markets could be catalysed in the countries supported by the CIRDA programme, and how NHMSs could maximise their benefit from such markets. Two main conclusions emerged from the assessment. Firstly, NHMSs should collaborate rather than compete with private sector weather companies; and secondly NHMSs should embark on phased, slow transitions into entities that derive benefits from the national commercial weather markets.”

• Anthony Mills - Main Findings of the CIRDA Market Assessment
• Robert Kintu - The Commercial Market Opportunity of Weather and Climate Services in Africa
• Alan Miller - Building the Last Mile with Public-Private Partnerships
• Babatunde Abidoye - UNDP Impact Evaluation Baseline Survey

How will all these lessons be applied by UNDP-supported, GEF-financed Climate Information and Early Warning Systems Projects, NHMS, Disaster Management Units, and other relevant stakeholders? It will take continued dialogue, enabling policies, constant contact with end users, and just a bit of hard work.