About

Future Climate For Africa (FCFA) is a research and development programme, jointly funded by the UK Government’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) (formerly known as the Department for International Development) and the UK Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), that has been enhancing scientific knowledge and prediction of African climate and piloting methods to ensure impact on specific development problems.

Since 2015, FCFA has brought together more than 200 researchers from over 20 countries to improve understanding of climate variability and change across Africa.

It is a multi-consortia programme implemented by five international research teams and supported by a central coordination unit;

IMPALA (Improving Model Processes for African Climate)
AMMA-2050 (African Monsoon Multidisciplinary Analysis 2050)
FRACTAL (Future Resilience for African Cities and Lands)
HyCRISTAL (Integrating Hydro-climate science into policy decisions for climate-resilient infrastructure and livelihoods in East Africa)
UMFULA (Uncertainty reduction in Models for Understanding Development Applications)
CCKE (Coordination, Capacity Development and Knowledge Exchange Unit)

Please click on the organogram here.

FCFA ORGANOGRAM

WHY FCFA?

Sub-Saharan Africa is highly vulnerable to weather and climate variability as well as future climate change. African countries are already incorporating climate change responses into strategies and plans in order to help manage these impacts. But many decision-makers struggle to access relevant climate information.

Investment in usable and useful climate information provides an important means of reducing climate related risks today, and to account for future climate risks in plans, policies and actions. This investment helps to enable Africa’s aspirations for more effective disaster risk management, resilience to climate change and climate-smart development.

The Future Climate for Africa programme has been at work to fill this need, emphasising a transdisciplinary approach to knowledge production and mobilisation through strengthened climate research and improved policy/decision-making capacity on the continent

FCFA'S GOALS

The ultimate goal of FCFA is to reduce disruption and damage from climate change and to safeguard economic development and poverty eradication efforts over the long-term. In this way, FCFA aims to make new African infrastructure and urban and rural plans and investments more climate-resilient.

FCFA is:

Improving scientific understanding of climate variability and change across Africa and the impact of climate change on specific development decisions;
Ensuring that decision-makers are able to incorporate relevant climate information when making key decisions in medium to long-term (5-40 year) climate resilient plans and investments;
Funding new scientific research while helping grow the future generation of African scientists.

FCFA'S IMPACT

Delivering world-leading research to advance knowledge and prediction of African climate variability and change in areas critical to informing development decisions with long-term consequences.
Delivering a suite of robust, easy-to-use climate information products tailored for decision-making.
Developing evidence and tools to support better integration of climate information into decision-making.
Conducting several pilot projects, co-produced with local scientists, decision-makers and users of climate information , to consider how the information and tools can be used to support real decision-making processes.
Building the knowledge and skills of users in how to apply climate information in practice.
Strengthening scientific capacity and international collaboration in Africa.