Cameroon / Meteorology: Platforms for users of climatological services in the agricultural and disaster risk management sectors soon to be operationalized.

The close to thirty (30) workshop attendees have been drawn from institutions directly involved in one way or the other, with meteorological data in the agricultural and disaster risk management sectors, notably: Department of National Meteorology in the Ministry of Transport; ACMAD, Centre d’Application et de Prévision Climatologique de l’Afrique Centrale (CAPC-AC), Ministry of Territorial Administration, Ministry of Housing and Urban Development, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, Ministry of Livestock, Fishery and Animal Husbandry, Research Institute of Geology and Mines, SODEPA, Hévéa Cameroun SA, SOSUCAM, International Institute of Tropical Agriculture, Service d’Appui aux Initiatives Locales de Développement (SAILD), Cameroon Development Corporation, Green Horizon, Cameroon Red Cross, Urban Councils of Yaounde, Douala, Kribi and Bafoussam. 

Opening the workshop in the capacity of the Representative of the Minister of Transport, the Director of National Meteorology, Simplice TCHINDA TAZO noted that the operationalization of user interfaces is a critical step in the process of establishing a National Climate Services Framework and Cameroon engaged in the process, intends to complete it thanks to the support of the ClimSA project, which gives priority to the provision of climate services. The Director also underlined that the workshop will lay the foundations of a real platform for dialogue and exchange of climate services for agriculture and disaster risk reduction.

According to the Director General of ACMAD, Dr André KAMGA FOAMOUHOUE, the expected outcome of the workshop includes the following: a repertoire of needs and climatological services for agricultural and disaster risk management sectors; availability of a catalogue of products and services to satisfy needs; documented shortcomings and envisaged amelioration on the products; available challenges and proposed solutions in line with capacity development in order to modernize climatological services in the agricultural and disaster risk management sectors and validation of Terms of Reference, products/services and internal rules of the Reduction of Risks/Catastrophes and Agriculture interfaces.

In order to meet the above expectations of the workshop, the six presentation sessions will focus on: needs (product and services) of stakeholders/actors, producers and services, catalogue of meteorological services in connection to needs, governance, elaboration of products and diagnostic of products in need of amelioration and capacities to be developed for subsequent dispatching.