Final Report: Climate Services for Agriculture in Rwanda

This framework aims to meet climate service needs across sectors and has been endorsed by a Steering Committee to oversee its development. The project collaborated with the USAID-funded Climate Information Services Research Initiative (CISRI) project on an evaluation of the use of climate information and behavior changes resulting from project activities in the four initial pilot districts. Preliminary results show higher rates of use for farm decision-making and higher average yields in the sectors that had Participatory Integrated Climate Services for Agriculture (PICSA) training. To strengthen evidence of the impact of climate services on farmers' production and incomes, the project developed an on-farm experimental protocol, trained local partners in the protocol, set-up a field trial monitoring system, and launched an initial network of field trials at a field day. The project supported the development of an agricultural drought risk analysis and early warning system for the Government of Rwanda, which required the development of a new, calibrated, gridded national soil database. Laboratory measurements and statistical analyses of data from 89 soil sampling locations were completed. This soil database is being developed to support climate-driven soil water balance Maproom tools that will provide a foundation for agricultural drought risk analysis and early warning, rainfed growing season onset and cessation analysis, and decision support. The project advanced a joint study of Rwanda's historic climate with Meteo-Rwanda staff and IRI collaborators, which will be submitted to an academic journal. The study aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of Rwanda's climate and its variability. The project also supported Meteo-Rwanda on a project concept note submitted to the DfID-funded Weather and Climate Information Services for Africa (WISER) program, which, if funded, will support further development and automation of downscaled seasonal climate forecasts for agriculture and development of ICT-based climate service learning materials. The project team met in Kigali in December to revise the overall strategy and partner budgets in response to a $1M reduction to the overall budget, and to refine the project Monitoring and Evaluation strategy. The project supported the development of a multi-sector national climate services policy framework under the UN Global Framework for Climate Services, which was launched with the "National Consultative Workshop for Setting Up a National Framework for Climate Services (NFCS) in Rwanda." The workshop was attended by 119 participants representing national government and non-governmental institutions, local project partners, universities, civil society, and several international organizations.