National Frameworks for Climate Services in West Africa: Are we on the right pathway?

To support the development of climate-resilient pathways, several developing countries are urged to strengthen their scientific base to generate climate and weather information, products and services. This is usually achieved by developing the capacity of national hydro-meteorological services (NMHS) and warning services, to support in turn adaptation planning for intermediary and final users.

In West Africa, several countries, have adopted National Framework of Climate Services (NFCS), with the support of the Global Framework of Climate Services (GFCS) secretariat. They operationalize these NFCS by implementing national or regional climate and weather information-based programs, supported by different international agencies. The ultimate goal of these programs is to enhance the service delivery and warnings to communities, by strengthening the “last mile” connectivity.

Burkina Faso, Chad, Cote d'Ivoire, Liberia, Mali, Niger, Senegal, as well as the Economic Community of West African Sates (ECOWAS) organization itself benefit from the support of international agencies, to tackle the food insecurity and recurrent storm flooding issues they face. By enhancing the institutional capacities of their NHMS and other relevant institutions, including their disaster management authorities and early warning system for food security management agencies, the projects intend to solve the climate related food security crises, improve the short range forecasts for high impact weather and, generally speaking boost the uptake of climate information by the different stakeholders from different socio-economic sectors.

The underlying theory of change (ToC) for these programs is based on a systematic causal chain assuming that the improvement and modernization of the hydro meteorological systems and services of the countries, will result in the provision to communities and national users with adapted, accurate and timely weather, climate and hydrological information; taking advantage of these improvements, the national/regional enhanced institutions will then efficiently consider the demands of stakeholders at all levels of the country and adapt their offer accordingly.

This research is assessing the implementation of some NFCSs and "hydromet programs" running in West Africa. The preliminary results show that the causal chain of the ToC is not so straightforward. Even if opportunities exist in the region, challenges are still big. They range from lack of knowledge of the spectrum and diversity of stakeholders, their specific needs and demands that would inform their action, the broader sensitization to the use of the climate information and collection of their feedback on the services. These challenges suggest in particular that, the allocation of resources to weather in the public sector is unlikely to become more effective until the so called "weather prediction enterprise", takes an integrated perspective on weather forecasts, impacts and policy that provides decision makers with reliable information on the costs and benefits of alternative courses and make it easier for “outsiders” to penetrate that community, due to the required expertise.