Addis Ababa — Africa's growth and economic development depends heavily on climate sensitive sectors and its natural resources, raising the need for the continent to enhance investments in Climate Information Services and stimulate uptake of CIS and use in economic development programs.
This was said by Mr. James Murombedzi, Officer in Charge of the Economic Commission for Africa's African Climate Policy Center (ACPC), in a presentation at a day-long workshop held Friday in Addis Ababa to mark Climate Information Services Day.
In the presentation titled; Enhancing the Uptake and Use of CIS in Development Policy, Planning and Practice: Strengthening Linkages Between Production and Uptake, Mr. Murombedzi said Africa should integrate climate considerations in development policy, planning and programs to achieve its development objectives.
He said it was important for the continent to create an enabling environment for CIS uptake because there is a great need for strong intellectual leadership in climate science-practice-policy on the continent, advisory services, technical assistance and human and institutional capacities.
Mr. Murombedzi said there's also a great need in Africa for convening spaces for science, policy and practice dialogue; generation, management and customization of climate data and associated knowledge products to effectively communicate climate solutions to key constituencies for climate-smart development.
He said currently there's low uptake of CIS on the continent because policy and legislative environments do not provide sufficient incentives for the uptake and use of CIS and there's limited capacity in the CI and CIS sector in Africa.
The proliferation of initiatives and small scale projects with very limited coordination; absence of a collaborative partnership framework for service delivery; limited strategic knowledge management and communication approaches and absence of coordinated and integrated monitoring, evaluation and learning approaches, are also to blame for the low uptake of CIS.
Mr. Murombedzi said linkages between CIS production and uptake can be strengthened through an enabling environment for the uptake and investments in CIS by focusing on a number of things, including developing human and institutional capacity on the continent; facilitating CIS coordination, and partnerships for service delivery and data sharing; developing strategic frameworks and approaches for knowledge management, communication and dissemination of products.
Linkages can also be strengthened by promoting intellectual leadership and frontier climate research for development (CR4D) and through an integrated approach for co-designing, co-producing, co-communicating climate services, he said.
The main objective of the workshop is to allow participants to discuss ways of enhancing the uptake and use of CIS, building on concrete cases and experiences of utilization of CIS in development, planning, policy and practice in Africa.
