Africa's Action Plan for 'Early Warning for All' Launched at the African Climate Summit
At a high-level event during the opening day of the Africa Climate Summit, Africa's Action Plan for 'Early Warning for All' was launched. The ambitious plan is a comprehensive initiative aimed at improving the continent’s early warning systems to enhance disaster preparedness and response in alignment with the global mandate set by United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres for the protection of every individual through early warning systems by 2027.
As a regional partner of the consortium of organizations led by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and working closely with its regional office for Africa, AICCRA helped prepare the content related to Africa in the EW4All Executive Action Plan 2023 – 2027.
The comprehensive multi-hazard Early Warning for All (EW4All) in Africa Action Plan is aimed at ensuring precise and timely information regarding natural hazards and impending disasters is accessible to all sectors of African society, specifically focusing on the most vulnerable populations and their support actors. It outlines the key objectives, strategies, and expected outcomes.
This commitment aligns with the global mandate set by United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres, who has called for the protection of every individual through early warning systems by 2027. As part of this worldwide initiative, several African nations have been earmarked for prioritized action.
Continental Alignment
EW4AIl Action Plan is fully aligned with Agenda 2063, ‘The Africa We Want’, the Africa Climate Change Strategy, the 2030 global agenda and supports key Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction provisions and the Paris Agreement on climate change and the Sustainable Development Goals on poverty, hunger, health, water, clean energy, climate action and sustainable cities.
The strategies include implementing activities around four foundational Pillars: (i) Disaster risk knowledge and management, (ii) observation and forecasting, (iii) dissemination & communication, and (iv) preparedness and response capabilities. These efforts are coordinated on the continent through the support of the political leadership. For each pillar, a proposed scenario for what success looks like required actions and proposed activities have been developed, and pillar implementation strategies and coordination considered from regional to national levels. A few more details on each pillar are provided below.
- Disaster Risk Knowledge and Management
- Risk Identification and Assessment
- Observations, monitoring, and forecasting
- Dissemination and Communication
- Preparedness and Response Capabilities
- Governance and Coordination
- EW4All Steering Committee
AICCRA’s contribution to the EW4All Launch
AICCRA is a regional partner of the consortium of organizations, which is led by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and working closely with its regional office for Africa that helped prepare the content related to Africa in the EW4All Executive Action Plan 2023 – 2027.
In this respect, the AICCRA-ESA team, including Dr. Dawit Solomon (Regional Program Leader), Dr. Teferi Demissie (Senior Climate Scientist) and Dr. Yosef Amha (Senior Researcher affiliated with the African Policy Centre) in collaboration with Dr. Ernest Afiesimama (Regional Program Manager at WMO Regional Office for Africa) has been instrumental in contributing to the pillar on ‘Observation, Monitoring and Forecasting’.
Furthermore, AICCRA and the WMO-Regional Office for Africa teamed up on activities related to disaster risk knowledge generation and management in Western, Central, Eastern and Southern Africa by facilitating knowledge exchange and climate information-focused capacity-building engagements in collaboration with Centre Régionale AGRHYMET (West Africa) and IGAD Climate Prediction and Application Centre ICPAC (Eastern Africa) as well as national meteorological service providers in over 15 spillover countries across the regions.
Dr. Ernest Afiesimama, Regional Programme Manager, World Meteorological Organization Regional Office for Africa
“AICCRA, in its collaboration with WMO Regional Office for Africa as one of our partners, led to the development of the EW4All in Action Plan as it has always supported other programmes of our organization, including the annual production of the State of Climate in Africa Reports. We look forward to our continued collaboration and partnership in implementing the Action Plan in the continent.”
- Dr. Ernest Afiesimama, Regional Program Manager at WMO Regional Office for Africa
"AICCRA has been supporting the national met services in [East and Southern Africa] region to have improved sub-seasonal and seasonal forecasting, which is one of the key tools including the provision of NexGen forecasting (PyCPT) training to support EW4All’s pillars."
- Dr. Teferi Demissie, Senior Climate Scientist at AICCRA East and Southern Africa
Teferi Demissie on the Early Warnings for All in Africa Action Plan
Furthermore, AICCRA has been pivotal in working together with the IGAD Climate Application and Prediction Center (ICPAC), the World Food Programme and the Anticipation Hub on anticipatory action in the IGAD region to enhance disaster preparedness.
In order to appreciate the progress and challenges in advancing early warning at regional and national levels, AICCRA supported a recent gathering under the theme, ‘Anticipatory Action in the IGAD region: Better together – Lessons Learnt and Charting the way forward for Early Warning and Anticipatory Early Action.’ The event was essential in consolidating anticipatory action knowledge and experiences in the region to better understand bottlenecks and opportunities at national and subnational levels.
High-level participation during the EW4All launch
Author
Brook Tesfaye Makonnen, Communications and Knowledge Management Lead - AICCRA Ethiopia and East and Southern Africa
With thanks to Dr. Ernest Afiesimama and Dr. Teferi Demissie for their review and contributions.