Workshop weather services for farmers in Tanzania

Published on 23 November 2018 by Saskia van Pelt

Weather Impact has visited the Tanzanian Meteorological Agency (TMA) for a workshop about weather services for small scale farmers in Tanzania. The workshop took place in the scope of the Sikia project and targeted the experts in Numerical Weather Prediction at TMA.


The workshop was focused on using ensemble forecasts for tailored weather forecasting and weather warnings. Fiona van der Burgt from Weather Impact introduced the concept of ensemble forecasting and how one can use ensemble forecasting models to make optimal decision support services for farmers. In a hands-on session, ensemble model output was translated by the participants to a localised weather forecast that can be send to a farmer as mobile text message.

Furthermore, the workshop covered a session about public private partnerships to make sustainable weather services for specific end-users. The session included a hands-on session working with the ‘weather toolbox’ in HydroNET, a product that was developed within the G4AW-Rain4Africa project.

At closure of the workshop, the ambition was formulated to verify the quality of the mobile forecasts provided to farmers registered under Sikia. The verification will be done against ground-station measurements provided by TMA and against the observations that the farmers make themselves. This will result in a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the validity of the forecasts over the area.