ECMWF Director-General Florence Rabier signed the Space for Early Warning in Africa (SEWA) agreement during the European Space Conference in Brussels in January 2025.
ECMWF is contributing to the EU-funded Africa–EU Space Partnership Programme that started in January 2025 by taking a leading role in the four-year Space for Early Warning in Africa (SEWA) component.
SEWA is to develop space-based services and applications to strengthen early warning systems of hazardous weather and climate-related events in sub-Saharan Africa. The other participants in SEWA are EUMETSAT and the African Union Commission (AUC).
“SEWA will allow ECMWF and its Member States to strengthen the long-standing support and collaboration with African national meteorological and hydrological services (NMHSs) and contribute to the UN Early Warning for All initiative,” said ECMWF’s Deputy Director of Forecasts, Umberto Modigliani.
The Africa–EU Space Partnership also includes two components between ESA and the AUC to support institutional partnership and decision-making processes, and to increase the capacity and skills of the private sector.
EU Commissioner for International Partnerships Jozef Síkela said: "The Africa–EU Space Partnership Programme represents an important part for our cooperation with Africa, as we work together to harness the power of space technology to address global challenges. This initiative will strengthen Africa's resilience to the consequences of climate change, but also drive digitalisation and also enable us to build lasting partnerships, share knowledge, and innovate together.”
ECMWF’s main role
SEWA will be working with four WMO Regional Climate Centres (RCCs) in western, central, eastern and southern Africa, and also with the African Center of Meteorological Applications for Development (ACMAD).
ECMWF will take the lead in one of five SEWA activities, which is to enable the co-design and delivery of impact-based forecast services and tools with other European stakeholders.
“We will develop four pilots covering each of the sub-Saharan African regions, including Indian Ocean islands,” says Stijn Vermoote, the Head of ECMWF’s User Outreach and Engagement Section. “We will facilitate engagement between European meteorological services and the African RCCs to develop impact-based forecasts.”
Such forecasts are linked to particular hazards and vulnerabilities in different regions and include advice on what to do in the face of extreme weather.
The goal is to develop demonstrator products that show what is possible. In addition, for each region two hazards will be selected that are particularly prominent there, such as tropical cyclones or droughts.
Forecasts will be provided by ECMWF and national meteorological services, such as the German National Meteorological Service (DWD) and the UK Met Office, as well as other providers. They will include EU Copernicus data from the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS), the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), and the Copernicus Emergency Management Service (CEMS). For efficient access to the forecast products, the use of the European Weather Cloud is planned.
This is an example of an ECMWF forecast for Africa, starting on 1 February 2024 for March–April–May 2024. It shows probability information regarding seasonal anomalies of precipitation. Specifically, it shows the probability that the precipitation lies in the lower tercile (lower third) or the upper tercile (upper third) of the 24-year climatological distribution.
However, first the user requirements will have to be established as precisely as possible. “For 2025, the focus will be on an in-depth scoping study to map all existing services in the four regions and to consult on user requirements, with a view to drawing up a road map,” Stijn says.
Other ECMWF activities
ECMWF will also help to ensure that data and services are available for early warning systems. “We will mainly use this aspect to prepare for the use of the European Weather Cloud,” says Umberto. “This is essentially about user support activities.”
In addition, we will have a role in capacity building through technical training. We will provide inputs into training materials that already exist, and we will organise train-the-trainer events for each of the African regions.
We also plan to have at least two fellows a year from the different RCCs, complementing the WMO fellowship scheme.
SEWA comes at an opportune time regarding the availability of ECMWF weather data. “Our data will be completely open by the end of this year, and this will be an opportunity to engage with African stakeholders to make the data truly useable and useful,” Stijn explains.
Four new posts are being created at ECMWF to run SEWA. The postholders will be experts in managing the grants made available, user services, partnerships and training, and the weather products themselves.
An online SEWA information day, for the benefit of European national meteorological and hydrological services (NHMS) and other stakeholders, will be held on 19 March.
Further reading
More information on the Africa–EU Space Partnership Programme can be found in a European Commission news article.
Representatives of the organisations participating in SEWA pose with the signed contract (from left to right: Catherine Kavvada, the Director for Secure and Connected Space at the European Commission; ECMWF Director-General Florence Rabier; Marjeta Jager, the Deputy Director-General of International Partnerships at the European Commission; Tidiane Ouattara, the President of the Council of the African Space Agency; ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher; Simonetta Cheli, ESA Director of Earth Observation Programmes; and EUMETSAT Director-General Philip Evans).