Future Climate for Africa (FCFA) aims to generate fundamentally new climate science focused on Africa, and to ensure that this science has an impact on human development across the continent.

Watch the video to learn more about FCFA

LOCATIONS COVERED

FCFA is implemented by 5 international research teams working across the African continent:

AMMA-2050 – Burkina Faso and Senegal.
UMFULA – Malawi and Tanzania.
HyCRISTAL – Kenya and Uganda.
FRACTAL – Botswana, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Zimbabwe and Zambia.
IMPALA – Pan-Africa

African Climate Risks Conference

Future Climate for Africa hosted the African Climate Risks Conference (ACRC) in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia in October 2019 under the theme “dismantling the barriers to urgent climate adaptation action.” It brought together over 350 researchers gathering from 52 different countries across the African continent and abroad to discuss the latest research on African climate. It also provided the opportunity for many FCFA researchers to showcase their findings on the latest climate research from the FCFA programme.

LATEST NEWS

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Understanding the impact of climate change on urban WASH in Africa through new interactive site

An interactive site recently published by Future Climate for Africa (FCFA) showcases the research of FCFA in urban Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) systems across the continent. It provides an overview of the status of urban WASH systems in countries and cities where FCFA has been working and the climate risks these WASH systems are facing. Further, it aims to highlight the relationship between future climate and effective WASH service delivery in African cities.

Climate researchers from across Africa build their capacity in Python programming at FCFA & GCRF African SWIFT workshop

In a collaborative effort, Future Climate for Africa (FCFA) and GCRF African-SWIFT organised a one-week online Python workshop (from 7th to 12th June 2021) for researchers in Atmospheric Science and Meteorology and forecasters at operational weather centres based in Africa with a keen interest in developing their data analysis skills. The workshop was a virtual, practical-oriented training targeted at equipping participants with relevant Python programming tools for integrating the Python programming language into workflows at National Meteorological Operational and Research centres, analysing climate data and recreating figures suitable for international peer-reviewed journals.

Finding real-world solutions to Africa’s climate and development nexus

Future Climate for Africa (FCFA), which draws to a close this year, has worked closely with countries in sub-Saharan Africa in an effort to influence real-world decision-making in the context of climate change, including to address city-based development issues such as the overlap between urban sanitation and flood risk. The work aimed to inform planning, policies and investments, foster new partnerships and collaborations, and build new talent on the African continent through capacity building initiatives.

Innovative games and role-playing help West African farmers grapple with climate change

Building new climate knowledge to support the agricultural sector has been a key FCFA focus. Using novel research processes, such as the Plateau Game, FCFA is better able to understand how farmers in West Africa make agricultural and land management decisions, and how climate events influence their decision making. Another innovate approach used in Senegal’s agricultural sector was a participatory theatre forum. African and European FCFA researchers teamed up with a troupe of West African actors to put on a theatre production for a very specific audience: farmers, local and regional government representatives with an agricultural portfolio, and civil society.

FEATURED RESOURCES

Impact story: Cross-institutional development of knowledge and capacity building amongst African climate scientists partnering in AMMA-2050

July 16, 2021

Part of the co-production of climate information in AMMA-2050 included the development of an atlas containing information about projected future climate changes in West Africa, or climate metrics, that are relevant to supporting medium-term decision making. Such metrics included information on annual rainfall and the number of extreme precipitation days per year. In line with the capacity building aims of AMMA-2050, it was decided that the production of this atlas would be undertaken by African climate scientists who would be trained and supervised by UK-based climate scientists with more coding experience. The decision was made to combine production of the climate change atlases with a Python scientific language training course for African climate scientists involved in AMMA-2050.

Impact story: Strengthening the development of decision-relevant climate information: the impact of engaging in AMMA-2050 on partnering researchers

July 16, 2021

AMMA-2050 researchers have highlighted how engaging with the project has strengthened their ability to produce decision-relevant climate information not just in terms of technical capacities, but also in more effectively engaging with decision-makers to better appreciate their needs and develop more useful science. This engagement has also resulted in indirect benefits for some researchers, including career promotion.

Impact story: More and more flooding in Ouagadougou area, Burkina Faso

July 16, 2021

AMMA-2050 has developed methodologies for mapping inundation across Ouagadougou from intense storms, taking account of changes in land use and climate. Hydrological modelling allows exploration of how flows and inundated areas may change in the future at the city level in response to climate and land use change.

Impact story: FONERWA: Climate Risk Screening Tool for Rwanda

July 16, 2021

There was limited understanding of climate change or impacts by FONERWA (Rwanda’s climate and environment fund), no direct considerations for climate variability or change in the application process and few project proposals were appropriately considering climate information. Recognising this, the FCFA work in Rwanda centred on developing the capacity of the FONERWA project appraisal team to perform a rudimentary screening on all project proposals. This would include a stronger review of applications for climate risks and provide FONERWA with information they can share with project developers so that climate information is better understood and incorporated into project design and implementation.

Impact story: Climate Information for Resilient Tea Production (CI4Tea)

July 16, 2021

The Climate Information for Resilient Tea Production (CI4Tea) project has developed a new methodology for producing site-specific climate change information. CI4Tea is co-producing climate information by iteratively engaging tea sector stakeholders in western Kenya to understand their climate information needs and incorporate their feedback for developing usable climate information.

Impact story: Informing long-lived decision making in the Lake Victoria basin through provision of a plausible range of future lake level and outflow changes

July 16, 2021

Lake Victoria is one source of the Nile and it provides major fisheries (which are important both to local livelihoods and the national economies), is a key transport route between three major countries of the East African community and the Lake outflow provides a major hydropower source. The lake is unusual in that it is the largest tropical lake in the world and is largely fed by on-lake rain (not rivers) and largely emptied through evaporation (not rivers). The evaporation and lake-land circulations mean the lake triggers rain over the lake at night, making it a unique coupled hydrological-meteorological system.