Mapping the development and implementation of climate services in the Greater Horn of Africa

A plethora of programmes and projects focus on strengthening climate services in the Greater Horn of Africa (GHA); a region of great economic importance in a changing Africa. However, knowledge of how key elements of climate services development and implementation at different stages of the process are addressed in these initiatives is very limited. To overcome this gap, we pursued a systematic review of existing literature under the auspices of the H2020 CONFER project. We scope the academic and grey literature by focusing on initiatives that empirically demonstrate the value added at different stages of climate service development and implementation such as data generation, post-processing, tailoring, and re-packaging of information for communication. Our analysis takes stock of the evolution of climate services in GHA and provides a synoptic overview of the current landscape of climate services at seasonal and sub-seasonal time scales, and across sectors and geographical scales in the region. It highlights the current emphasis on the deployment of climate services in specific countries such as Kenya, Ethiopia and Uganda, while a strong thematic focus on services tailored for the agriculture sector. Our analysis also shows that while there is an increasing effort in tailoring and effectively communicating climate services through greater knowledge co-production, aspects such as accessibility, timeliness, and accuracy of climate services information remain key barriers to the uptake and use of such services. Finally, we identify opportunities for further improvement to the underlying processes of climate services development and implementation as well as future research and policy directions in this region of global importance.