Uganda is on the forefront of a new initiative in Africa from the Global Humanitarian Forum. The new program was launched at the Global Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction meeting in Geneva. This new project intends to deploy 5,000 automatic weather stations across Africa mounted on mobile phone masts. These weather stations will gather data such as rainfall and wind conditions and distribute the information to national weather agencies across the continent. The first 19 stations have been established around Lake Victoria in Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania.

Kofi Annan, former U.N. chief and current president of the Global Humanitarian Forum, said, “The world’s poorest are also the world’s most vulnerable when it comes to the impact of climate change, and the least equipped to deal with its consequences.” He went on to add, “Today you find cell phone towers in almost every part of Africa. We have never been able to establish weather monitoring on that scale, until now.”

Today about 70% of income in Africa is from farming, most of which relies on natural rainfall. However, up to know the ability to accurately predict rainfall and wind patterns has not been available to the majority of farmers. In comparison to Europe’s thousands, the entire continent only has about 200 weather stations.