Forecasting a stable future

Accurately predicting the weather can be a matter of life and death in Africa, so Computer Aid’s scheme to provide PCs to African Met offices is essential

The depth of one of Africa’s largest water reserves, Lake Victoria, has been consistently declining over the past few years.

The water level is extremely sensitive to changes in rainfall over the lake’s catchment basin, and is a major factor in the region’s economic development.

Computers may not be an obvious answer to the problems caused by the continent’s climate changes.

But thanks to the charity Computer Aid International, shipments of donated PCs to some of Africa’s Meteorological (Met) offices have transformed local farming practices such as those around the Lake Victoria basin, and improved economic development.

The PCs are used to produce effective weather forecasting, which is more important in developing countries, says Computer Aid chief executive Tony Roberts.

“The direct impact of climate change in some regions of Africa is starvation,” says Roberts.

The weather can affect anything from where to build dams to whether a farmer should plant maize or corn.

By donating computers to help local climate forecasting, Computer Aid is giving African countries project ownership to avoid any political uneasiness.

The organisation removes, data-wipes and ships decommissioned PCs to developing countries, predominantly to improve IT literacy among school-age children.

“Our work also involves helping non-profit organisations such as African Met offices to improve efficiency and processes which will affect and improve the quality of life of its citizens,” says Roberts.

Since its launch in 1997, Computer Aid has shipped more than 90,000 PCs
to schools and other not-for-profit organisations in more than 100 developing countries.

One of the organisation’s projects has been to provide computers for African Met offices in Kenya and Zimbabwe at the request of the UK Met Office.

The latest country to benefit from the refurbished PC shipments is Uganda’s Met Office, which last month took delivery of 200 units.

The computers were placed in weather collection stations for staff to retrieve and analyse local climatic information to provide immediate advice to farmers.

Previously, the weather stations used manual systems to collect data once a month, which was then sent to the national office by post.

The information was often too broad and out of date to have any real value to local farmers, says Roberts.

“A wheat farmer needs to know when there will be five consecutive days of rain to sow their harvest and even more importantly when there will be five days without rain to harvest crops,” he says.

The Met Office advice taken by farmers in a similar project in Kenya improved agricultural yields five-fold, compared with neighbouring farmers who did not have access to the advice.

“That is on the level of a single farm, so if you were able to multiply that on a national level, we could take countries from a position of food aid dependency to having a surplus of food that they were able to export,” says Roberts.

So making the information available to all is critical if the Ugandan project is to be a success.

“The technical problems have been around connectivity as bandwidth availability is limited and expensive compared with the UK, although the situation is steadily improving,” says Roberts.

Transmission of data is an area that still has to be worked out, and to initiate the project things have to be kept simple.

In fact, the success of the programme lies in its low-tech nature, according to the UK Met Office’s technical co-operation programme manager Steve Palmer.

The project hinges around a tailor-made software application called Climsoft, developed by Reading University.

It is a climatology database which runs over Microsoft Access and Visual Basic, so it is scalable and can run on an office PC.

“Its simplicity makes it affordable to developing countries compared with big databases, such as Oracle, where you have to pay an annual licence fee,” says Palmer.

The London Met Office is providing part funding and overall co-ordination.
And by rolling out PCs to Uganda’s Met Office and observation offices around the country, the climatic information will be more accurate and timely.

“The statistical data helps farmers make sensible decisions on the basis of seasonal forecasting with the aim of teaching them how to use climatological data in relation to their crops,” says Palmer.

The UK Met Office oversaw co-ordination for a similar project in Kenya in 2006, which served as a model for the current Ugandan project. It hopes to see the same successful results.

Palmer believes giving local offices computers will give Met Office workers a sense of ownership and make them individuals who are more inclined to be conscientious. Such diligence, he believes, will also lead to fewer statistical errors.

Each Ugandan Met Office outpost has two or three PCs to account for breakages.
“Building operational services around one computer in a developing country can mean the project dies when that computer becomes defective,” says Palmer.

The donated PCs are two to three years old, which has its advantages. Being less sophisticated makes it less likely to be stolen or used to play games, says Palmer.

Data is collected every day, and the Met Office expects the frequency of collection to reduce errors and produce more accurate information.

Once the data is collected at local outposts, it will be sent to headquarters in Nairobi at regular intervals.

The method by which local offices send their data varies depending on what means of transmission is available.

Some will use email via a phone line, and others will employ pen drives.

“Transmission methods are a grey area at present and we’re not specifying one route in this project. But in the longer term I would expect the observing offices to gain internet connectivity,” says Palmer.

The climatic data is finally fed into a central database in Nairobi, so staff can produce climatic reports for farmers.

Not only do locals gain through better crop and construction planning, the UK Met Office also benefits.

“The advantage for us is that we get better data because the quality of Uganda’s climatic data is improved,” says Palmer.

“If Uganda provides better local data it will be more sustainable and able to continue to supply us with information.”

Climate change analysis for Africa

The UK Met Office helped to form the Climate Outlook Forum as a regional framework incorporating 15 African countries.

The forum encourages member countries to participate and share climate information, says the UK Met Office’s liaison and training manager Joseph Intsiful.

“Countries such as Liberia and Sierra Leone that are suffering infrastructure devastation from civil war will benefit from climate change information to
improve the speed of reconstruction,” says Intsiful.

The African continent has strong development goals for 2030 – and long-term climatic information can be critical at the planning stages.

“The data collected in the Met projects will be used to obtain seasonal outlooks such as rainfall, and that impacts on health, agriculture and other economic areas,” says Intsiful.

Long-term climate data can also be used to provide analytical reports which guide policy makers in preparing for natural disasters, health and economic issues.

As well as development benefits, the long-term analytics can provide information about global warming based on the simulations.

“We provide training so that African meteorological centres can generate their own national and regional climate scenarios for climate-change analysis,” says Intsiful.

What is the WEEE Directive?

The 2005 Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) directive is a European regulation designed to tackle the growing amount of electronic equipment waste.

Electrical equipment is one of the fastest-growing waste sectors in the UK at about two million tonnes every year, predominantly ending up as landfill.

The regulation is designed to encourage more waste to be collected, treated and recovered instead of going to landfills.

Computer Aid’s premise of sending legacy PCs to developing countries allows UK firms to dispose of their equipment, according to the new directive, while benefiting the developing world.

The WEEE directive applies to all companies that import, manufacture or rebrand electrical equipment in the UK, as well as everyone who uses, sells, treats or disposes of electronic waste.

The directive sets treatment standards and recycling targets by making producers rather than users pay for its treatment recycling in most cases.

Equipment bought before 13 August 2005 being replaced by new equipment that fulfils the same function must now be disposed of by the producer of the new equipment.

Major benefits of climate projects

Farmers in Uganda need accurate and current rainfall statistics to make informed decisions about their crops. In Africa, it is a matter of life and death.

More than 10 days without rain means a maize crop will be ruined. So an unpredicted dry period within a rainy season could mean starvation for a farmer and his family.

Both millet and sorghum are more drought-resistant than maize, though they are less profitable. But for a farmer who knows what the weather might bring, a less profitable crop is preferable to no crop at all.

So many livelihoods dependent on the climate will benefit from weather forecasting. The data will not only improve the quality of their lives, but could actually keep them alive.
Improved crop production is not the only benefit. Forecasting weather conditions, such as temperature, cloudiness and humidity, can help to stem the spread of disease as humid conditions can incubate viruses and meningitis.

The data used to determine short-term weather conditions also has long-term meteorological value.

Farmers benefit from current data, and monthly summaries can help with planning and designing drainage systems, bridges and other construction projects.

In the long term, the data can be used for statistical analysis of climate change.

Apart from the data, the project has brought new training and skills to those working at local outposts, many of whom have never used PCs before.

The observing outposts are usually manned by two people and the training is provided by the Uganda Met Office.

About Computer Aid

PC reuse is more energy efficient than recycling because 75 per cent of fossil fuel consumption has already happened before a PC has even left the manufacturing plant.

The latest government guidelines in the WEEE Directive urge producers and users to reuse whole appliances rather than recycling and disassembling working equipment.

A professionally refurbished PC provides more than 6,000 hours of computer access time – enough to train 60 children to a vocational level of IT literacy.

Computer Aid can professionally refurbish and ship a PC for less than £50 per unit, putting the cost of IT literacy at less than £1 per child.

Computer Aid’s professional PC decommissioning service has been employed by many of the world’s most successful organisations, including Ford, Virgin, Packard Bell and BA.