About the programmes

WISER

WISER: Weather and Climate Services for Africa

The Weather and Climate Services for Africa (WISER) programme’s mission is to deliver transformational change in the quality, accessibility and use of weather and climate information services at all levels of decision-making for sustainable development in Africa. WISER is a programme of the UK Government’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), previously the UK Department for International Development (DFID), which is split into two components: one Pan-African, managed by the African Climate Policy Center (ACPC); and the other focused on East Africa, managed by the Met Office, based in the UK.

Under the East Africa component, five quick-start projects were commissioned in late 2015 and completed in 2018. A further series of projects comprising Phase 2 started in early 2018 and will be completed in 2020. WISER Phase 2 projects have a focus on applying co-production approaches in order to improve the uptake and use of weather and climate services. One Phase 2 project, TRANSFORM, was tasked with improving the learning and sharing of information between projects, and more broadly. This manual is a key deliverable of the TRANSFORM project and is intended to provide more practical information, drawing on learnings from WISER and other programmes.

The TRANSFORM project is a consortium led by SouthSouthNorth with the Climate System Analysis Group (CSAG) at the University of Cape Town, global consulting services company, ICF, the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) and the International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI) at Columbia University. All five organisations, as well as a range of partners engaged in climate services-related initiatives, produced co-production case studies sharing learning based on work they have done under a range of different programmes and initiatives, including:

Building Resilience and Adaptation to Climate Extremes and Disasters (BRACED)
Collaborative Adaptation Research Initiative in Africa and Asia (CARIAA)
Climate and Development Knowledge Network (CDKN)
Enhancing National Climate Services (ENACTS)
Future Climate for Africa (FCFA)
Improving Water Security for the Poor (REACH)
Science for Humanitarian Emergencies and Resilience (SHEAR).

Learnings from the WISER programme were turned into case studies using input from individual Phase 1 and 2 projects, with assistance from the TRANSFORM team. The manual also builds on the 2017 Guidance on Equitable and Inclusive Co-production for Weather and Climate Services. The WISER programme has also produced a large number of blogs and other materials on the topic of co-production.

FCFA

Future Climate for Africa is generating fundamentally new climate science focused on Africa, and ensuring that this science has an impact on human development across the continent.

FCFA: Future Climate for Africa

Five research consortia are undertaking fundamental research to significantly improve the understanding of climate variability and change across Africa and the impact of climate change on specific development decisions. In addition, a range of case studies demonstrating flexible methods for integrating improved climate information and tools in decision-making are being prepared. Lastly, FCFA is contributing to improved medium- to long- term (5–40 year) decision-making, policies, planning and investment by African stakeholders and donors.

The five research consortia are 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), IMPALA (Improving Model Processes for African Climate), and UMFULA (Uncertainty Reduction in Models for Understanding Development Applications), supported by a coordination unit housed at SouthSouthNorth.

In FCFA, co-production has not been defined universally. However, a number of outputs have been produced related to the topic as listed below:

Briefing paper: ‘Transdisciplinarity, co-production and co-exploration: Integrating knowledge across science, policy and practice in FRACTAL’
Learning paper: ‘Developing decision-relevant climate information and supporting its appropriate application: Learning from the Zaman Lebidi BRACED consortium in Burkina Faso and collaboration with AMMA-2050’
Blog: ‘Co-production aspiration and reality: Co-production sounds lovely, but have we ever seen it?’
Blog: ‘How African cities’ residents are creating climate change solutions’
Blog: ‘AMMA-2050 making strides in climate science and engaging stakeholders with climate information’.

Three of the research consortia and the coordination unit have provided case studies for this manual, outlining the rich learning from the programme as well as contributing to the guidance sections of this manual.