Climate Services for Agriculture: Empowering Farmers to Manage Risk and Adapt to a Changing Climate in Rwanda

The project aimed to provide climate services to farmers, government institutions, and other stakeholders in Rwanda. The project's overall goal was to empower farmers to manage risk and adapt to a changing climate. Project preparations included visits by Drs. James Hansen, Kevin Coffey, and James Kinyangi in July 2015. A Project Plan was developed through extended interaction between CCAFS and USAID-Rwanda. Kevin Coffey developed and submitted Project Year One Workplan, and Project M&E Plan. James Hansen finalized all three documents, which were approved by USAID-Rwanda. Dr. Kagabo was hired as Project Manager, effective March 1, 2016, and Gloriose Nsengiyumva was hired as Outcome 1 Coordinator: Climate Services for Farmers, effective February 4, 2016. Design Phase activities included a desktop review of climate-related challenges to agriculture, existing climate information, and relevant climate service initiatives. A Year-1 pilot district selection workshop was held on February 19, and institutional user and farmer consultation and preliminary needs assessment workshops were held on March 10-11. A project planning workshop was held on March 21-22, and a launch workshop was held on March 23. A planned technical workshop on M&E design was postponed due to unavailability of key experts. Outcome 1: Climate Services for Farmers focused on providing climate information products and communication strategies needed for farmers. A desk review scoping study was conducted, and a needs assessment workshop for representatives of farmers in the initial 4 pilot districts was held. The workshop had 39 participants from various institutions, including RAB, Meteo-Rwanda, OTP, TUBURA, MINAGRI, and agricultural representatives from the districts. Farmers identified the need to link indigenous knowledge, historical climate information, and tailor forecast around key decisions, including planting date, length of the seasons, and likelihood of occurrence/duration of drought spells during cropping seasons. Outcome 2: Climate Services for Government and Institutions focused on developing climate services for institutions. A desk review, stakeholder consultations, and needs assessment workshop were conducted, which identified a few promising areas for developing climate services for institutions. Institutions identified the need for climate information that enables them to anticipate climate risk across the year at actionable lead times and capacity building. Outcome 3: Climate Information Provision focused on capacity building activities with Meteo-Rwanda. Tufa Dinku and John del Corral led capacity building activities with Meteo-Rwanda in December 2015 and January 2016. The training had two components: data quality control and generating updated climate datasets, and integrating the newly generated datasets into Meteo-Rwanda's maprooms. Eight participants, including four women and four men, attended the training. Outcome 4: Climate Services Governance focused on developing a national climate services structure. The team identified a number of key institutions to engage in the Advisory Committee, which will be critical to developing a national climate services structure. A review of cross-ministerial governance structures in Rwanda and successful climate service governance structures elsewhere was conducted before forming the Advisory Committee and formulating their Terms of Reference. The project management team consists of Dr. James Hansen, Project Leader; Dr. Desire Kagabo, Project Manager; Gloriose Nsengiyumva, Outcome 1 Coordinator; and Dr. Tufa Dinku, Outcome 3 Coordinator. The project management team is supported by Dr. Eliud Birachi, Dr. Maren Radeny, and Vivian Atakos. The project has several contracted partners, including IRI, University of Reading, ILRI, and ICRAF, which provide technical support for project implementation. The project has achieved several outputs, including training Meteo-Rwanda staff, installing a new version of the Climate Data Tools (CDT), quality control of station data, and updating dekadal rainfall and temperature data. The project has also developed a project proposal, M&E plan, year one workplan, and fact sheet, and established a project information website and press release.