WISER HIGHWAY Research and Fellowship

WISER is funded by the UK government’s Department for International Development (DFID). The 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.

The Met Office acts as Fund Manager for the East Africa part of WISER, including the provision of technical leadership, future programme development, programme oversight and by managing sub-grants of funds.

WISER HIGHWAY Research and Fellowship

The development of African academic and research capacity to facilitate the integration of local knowledge and terminology, including indigenous knowledge, into weather information and warnings in the Lake Victoria Basin. 

Aim

To develop academic and research capability in region, facilitating the increase in uptake and use of weather warnings across target communities and users by making them more relevant and usable, with local knowledge and terminology. 

One of the challenges of introducing decision-making weather information to communities is its accessibility and ‘local acceptability’ to vulnerable people (end-users). Indigenous Knowledge (IK) has developed over many years, has its own vocabulary for terms, and is a fully understood and accepted for decision support by the local communities. The introduction of meteorology as an alternative source of decision-making information is a challenge as it is an unknown quantity and the language is often very technical in nature.  

This activity should test the effectiveness of incorporating IK and its vocabulary into the processes of distributing weather information and warnings, in collaboration with African academics and researchers. 

This activity will take place alongside pilots on Lake Victoria (in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda) testing the delivery of a regional, co-produced Impact-Based Early Warning System for key weather hazards to lake users and communities. Where suitable processes and methodologies are identified, it will develop the guidance and capacity for these to be delivered across the Lake Victoria region.