Continental RCC Knowledge-Sharing Workshop under ACCOF & S2S Climate Prediction Symposium

Although African National Meteorological and Hydrological Services (NMHSs) provide weather and climate information, the quality, relevance, and delivery formats of this information often do not fully meet the needs of effective early warning. There is therefore a need to better define and specify user requirements for warning products and services to enhance community resilience through improved risk management. Once these needs are clearly identified, the corresponding products and services should be developed, validated, and operationalized to ensure they effectively support early warning and decision-making processes. Strengthening seamless prediction systems, from weather to sub-seasonal and seasonal timescales, is critical to improving preparedness and resilience. Seasonal climate outlooks are essential planning tools across Africa, where the climate is highly variable. Yet, despite their importance, these forecasts often fall short of their potential, particularly for those operating at the local level (e.g., small farm holder), where decisions are most sensitive to climatic variation.

Regional Climate Centers (RCCs), as well National Meteorological and Hydrological Services are facing challenges such as disconnect between science-based information and the actual decision-making process (i.e., how information is presented to users), existing gap between local climate action needs and the decision-making processes that govern the functioning of climate outlook forums and other relevant spaces for forecast generation and translation (i.e., what are the operational arrangements to ensure timely delivery). These challenges are met with limited operational capacity to downscale regional forecasts into nationally and locally relevant ones, including those variables that are most relevant to the decision maker.
Despite these limitations, substantial progress has been made across the continent. Regularly, the RCCs across the continent provides seasonal forecasts through the Regional Climate Outlook Forums (RCOFs) such as GHACOF (Greater Horn for Africa), MedCOF (North Africa), PRESAC (Central Africa), PRESAGG (Gulf of Guinea countries), PRESASS (Sahelian countries), SARCOF (Southern Africa), SWIOCOF (Southwestern Indian Ocean countries). While these forums play a critical role in delivering seasonal climate outlooks, the current systems face weaknesses including inconsistencies in methodology, uneven technical capacity, limited observational data, weak cross-regional integration and learnings, communication gaps, limited verification practices, and over dependence on external support (e.g., models, products and tools and funding resources).

Considering these challenges, within the framework of the Climate Services and Related Applications (ClimSA) Programme, the African Centre of Meteorological Applications for Development (ACMAD), African RCCs and their partners gears to establish the African Continental Climate Outlook Forum (ACCOF). The ACCOF is an initiative that ensures that there is continental climate services and improved capacity amongst WMO designated and developing RCCs to regionalize products from WMO Global Producing Centers (GPCs). It also facilitates the coordination, integration, and harmonization of methods, tools, and products to deliver more accurate continental and regional climate forecasts. Additionally, it serves as a platform for technical discussions, knowledge exchange on the latest advances in climate science and technology, and the strengthening of interregional collaboration across Africa.
In line of strengthening this mechanism, the African Centre of Meteorological Applications for Development (ACMAD) and IGAD Climate Prediction and Applications Centre (ICPAC), in partnership with the UK Met Office, are implementing activities under the Pan-African Seasonal Strengthening (PASS) Project of the WISER Africa Programme, funded by the United Kingdom’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO). The WISER program aims to deliver transformation in the generation and use of co-produced weather and climate services to support decision making at local, national, and regional levels, building resilience on the impacts of climate change. The WISER-PASS project aims to strengthen the ability to produce and communicate seasonal information at regional, national and sub-national levels. The project seeks to work with designated WMO RCCs across Africa to improve the production, communication and delivery of the seasonal climate information. For ACMAD and ICPAC, the project will significantly enhance the existing system, by strengthening coordination, introducing shared digital infrastructure, and deepening collaboration across RCCs as well as NMHSs. It also aims to deliver improved and usable weather and climate products and services on various timescales (i.e. sub-seasonal to seasonal) anchored on principles of co-production and user engagement.
In line with the project objectives and synergizing their resources for broad outreach, ACMAD and ICPAC is planning to convene two back-to-back continental events in Kigali, Rwanda from 9 to 17 March 2026.