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WMO, together with the World Bank and United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR), will implement a new CREWS Initiative project that will benefit NMHSs  and WMO-accredited Regional Centres in the Central Africa region. The project is a follow-up action from the Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS) Hydromet Forum held on 4-6 May 2021.

The Central African region is vulnerable to climate variability and change, as well as severe events such as storms, storm surges and flooding. EM-DAT records 164 disasters related to weather, climate and water events between 1967 and 2021 in the region.  These resulted in 2 092 casualties, 55% related to flooding, 34% to landslides, 6% to drought and 4% to storms.

The Deltares 2021 State of the climate, meteorological and hydrological services and early warning systems (EWS) in Central Africa (in French), which was led by the World Bank  and ECCAS, identifies barriers  to capacity development for NMHSs and EWSs. The study provides evidence of the need for greater investment and support for better service provision and decision-making on hydro-climatic hazards in the region.

At the national level, the NMHSs of the 11 countries of the region – Angola, Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Rwanda, Sao Tomé e Principe – have already engaged in several initiatives to improve the production and delivery of weather, hydrological and climate services to vulnerable communities and sectors.

In this context, the new project aims to strengthen multi-hazard and impact-based early warning systems by:

• improving regional cooperation frameworks and capabilities for observation, data exchange, weather and climate forecasting, including seasonal and sub-seasonal outlooks, storm surge and other severe weather events, flooding and climate extremes
• supporting dissemination, emergency planning and response capacities in each of the beneficiary Members.

The multiplier potential of CREWS investments in this project is in line with the principles of the cascading forecast model for numerical weather prediction, which demonstrated benefits around the globe. The regional project is supporting:

• access to and optimal use of global model outputs at the regional level,
• access to and optimal use of more accurate regional outputs by participating NMHSs
• access to more and better local observations by global models through a feedback/collaboration mechanism. 

This will strengthen the existing cooperation framework and sustainably increase the capacity of NHMSs. In so doing, it will enable more optimal use of available resources for meteorological and hydrological forecasting and climate prediction; enhance the early warning services provided to stakeholders – with specific focus on civil protection, urban development, agriculture, food security and targeted communities at risk – and help inform the technical design of future investments. 

The combination of technical assistance from CREWS and investments from development partners will provide a conducive context for beneficiary countries to make significant advances in the provision of timely and accurate early warning information to vulnerable communities. 

Beneficiary countries: Angola, Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Congo, Democratic Republic of Cong, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Rwanda, Sao Tomé e Principe

Timeframe: 2022 – 2026

Total CREWS Contributions: US$ 4 850 000 (out of which US$ 2.5 million implemented by WMO)

Implementing Partners: WMO, World Bank (GFDRR) and UNDRR