NiMet Assisting Other Countries To Improve On Early Warning, Flood Forecast, Other Services
Oru Leonard
“NiMet has been assisting countries such as Mozambique, Malawi, Zambia, Liberia and Cameroon to improve on their provision of early warning services, especially providing flood forecast, high intensity rainfall forecast and drought forecast, so as to make it easier to access this fund.”
The Director General of NIgerian Meteorological Agency (NiMet), and Chairperson of the Governing Board of the African Centre of Meteorological Applications for Development (ACMAD), Prof. Mansur Bako Matazu, stated this at the closing ceremony of the 22nd Ordinary Session of the Governing Board of ACMAD, which was held in Abuja from May 5-6.
“We have assisted Mozambique, Malawi, and of course also in Zambia; we have assisted them to train their meteorological personnel, 34 in number over the last two years, on climate change monitoring and climate adaptation programs and projects.
“For Liberia and Cameroon their daily weather forecasting services are being carried out from Nigeria through NiMet at no cost to these two countries”, he said.
“NiMet has been categorized as the most advanced meteorological services. So many nations are learning and copying from what we are doing and in doing so, they are coming up with projects and programs that they can access this global climate change adaptation and mitigation fund. That is why this year’s COP is taking place in Egypt and NiMet and other African countries came up to work on the climate report for 2021 which will be presented in Egypt”.
Furthermore, he announced that they have been improving the capacity of the personnel, as well as capabilities and skills of other countries based on demand, and, ACMAD is providing the umbrella guide and direction which is helping NiMet to improve on its capability to to help other growing nations from Africa under the voluntary World Meteorological Organization (WMO) country partnership.
Matazu also disclosed that it is building the capacity of some African countries to access the $100 billion global climate fund, through the implementation of climate adaptation and mitigation projects.
The climate finance funding of $100 billion is to fund climate change mitigation, which are measures to reduce greenhouse emissions, and adaptation to climate change, but access to this fund has been a challenge to African countries.
Talking to Journalists, the ACMAD Director General, Dr. Andre Kamga Foamouhoue, said the meeting addressed two challenges which were: to work towards ensuring that more African countries have quality warnings operational; and to address the issue of operational connection between the meteorological services and disaster management.
“The deliberations were made on these, looking at best practices available around and structuring in their work plan on how they will move towards addressing these two challenges”, he added.
Speaking, the WMO Representative for North, Central and West Africa, Bernard Gomez, noted that ACMAD unfortunately, has not been getting the support it needs from the African countries, adding however, that with the arrival of professor Matazu as the Chairperson of the Board, things are getting organised.
“One thing that came out very clearly from this meeting is that ACMAD needs to reform so that they respond to the needs of society, and the current developments in technology, communications and others. The conditions when it was created and now, are different. They also need to take on board all the issues happening around them so that they can be relevant and be given the support they need to do their work.
“WMO is on ground to ensure that whatever technical assistance is required is being provided because countries really need the support of ACMAD to do what they are supposed to do”, Gumez stated.
