Climate Research for Development in Africa

Climate Research for Development in Africa

Climate Research for Development in Africa
The CR4D initiative was launched to strengthen links between climate science research and climate information needs in support development planning in Africa.

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CR4D is an African-led initiative supported by partnership between African Climate Policy Center (ACPC) of United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), African Ministerial Conference on Meteorology (AMCOMET), World Meteorological Organization (WMO), and Global Framework for Climate Services (GFCS). CR4D is the outcome of the African Climate Conference 2013 (ACC-2013), which was held in Arusha, Tanzania.

ACC-2013 brought together more than 300 participants drawn from top African climate scientists, policy makers, climate service providers, and practitioners to discuss the state of African Climate science and existing gaps in climate knowledge. Participants at the ACC-2013 recommended the establishment of an African Climate Research Agenda for Climate Services and Development (see here) in order to advance new frontiers of African climate research, focusing on four priority areas:

  1. Creation of co-designed multi-disciplinary research to improve forecast skills and reliability.
  2. Filling gaps in multi-sectorial and multi-disciplinary data sets for sector-specific vulnerability and impacts assessments.
  3. Enhancing Africa’s scientific and institutional capacities and networks to undertake cutting edge user-drive climate research.
  4. Fostering effective collaboration and interactions among climate science, services, policy, and practice communities in order to improve mainstreaming of climate services in decision-making.
  5. CR4D-Africa thus seeks to socialize climate science through an interactive and collaborative approach that brings climate science, services and policy-making under a coordinated multi-disciplinary network of expertise and institutions to collectively address the challenges while maximizing on the opportunities presented by climate change and variability to socio-economic development in Africa.