Strengthening Early Warning in Africa (SEWA)

The Africa-EU Space Partnership Programme 

Logo Global Gateway

The Africa-EU Space Partnership Programme (AESPP) aims to enhance strategic cooperation between African and European institutions and communities in using space-based technologies and services with a focus on Sub-Saharan Africa. It is embedded in the Global Gateway, which is the European Union's strategy to boost smart, clean and secure connections in digital, energy and transport sectors, and to strengthen health, education and research systems across the world, under the leadership of European Commission’s Director-General for International Partnerships (DG INTPA).  

The AESPP programme is structured around three key components: 

  • Component 1: EU–Africa Space Partnership: supporting institutional collaboration and decision-making processes. 
  • Component 2: Space and the Green Transition – Focus on Early Warning: developing space-based services, applications, and tools to strengthen Early Warning Systems for hazardous weather and climate-related events. 
  • Component 3: Space and the Private Sector: increasing the capacity and skills of the private sector, stimulating growth in the space industry, and expanding the data economy. 

In response to Component 2, the Strengthening Early Warning in Africa (SEWA) Action was initiated in January 2025, with a 4-year implementation period. 

ECMWF activities under this Action will stimulate the use of ECMWF and Copernicus data, as well as other European data, with the aim of co-developing impact-based forecast demonstration services and tools at the regional level in Sub-Saharan Africa with African partners. The use of Cloud computing and storage resources is envisaged for these tools to be developed close to the data. Through technical advice and co-designed train-the-trainer activities, actual uptake is further enhanced.  

Central to these activities are the close partnerships between the NMHSs and other topic specialists on early warning in Europe and the African Regional Climate Centers (RCC) of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and other Sub-Saharan African partners such as the Indian Ocean Commission (IOC) and WMO Regional Specialized Meteorological Centers (RSMCs). Peer-to-peer collaborations between European and African entities shall be stimulated in this manner. Close links with the WMO and the United Nations (UN) Early Warnings for All (EW4All) initiative are to be established to maximise complementarity. 

Logos EUMETSAT, ECMWF, AUC

The ECMWF activities will be implemented in close cooperation with the other two implementing partners, the African Union Commission (AUC) and the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT).

Each partner holds specific responsibilities, which for ECMWF are focused on the following three expected Outputs:  

  • 2.1 Improved access, processing, applicability and use of data and services for Early Warning 
  • 2.3 Enable co-design and delivery of Impact-Based Forecast services & tools 
  • 2.5 Strengthened human capacities, knowledge and community shaping   

For more information on the specific activities and funding opportunities, please see the most recent presentation and info session as well as ECMWF's suppliers portal.

Early Warning for All 

Around one-third of the global population lacks access to adequate multi-hazard early warning systems. The United Nations Early Warnings for All (EW4All) initiative aims to ensure universal access to weather warnings by 2027. 

Starting from the essence to build a Multi-Hazard Early Warning System (MHEWS), it’s constructed around the following four pillars: 

  • Pillar 1: Disaster risk knowledge 
  • Pillar 2: Detection, observation, monitoring, analysis, and forecasting 
  • Pillar 3: Warning dissemination and communication 
  • Pillar 4: Preparedness and response capabilities 

ECMWF has been contributing to all four of these Pillars and mainly to Pillar 2, which is under the responsibility of the WMO.  

ECMWF strongly contributes to improving data quality and access, sharing data worldwide and enhancing forecasting capabilities, be it directly in its role as WMO World Meteorological Centre (WMC), as computational centre for the Copernicus Emergency Management Service (CEMS) on behalf of the Joint Research Centre (JRC) or through new developments in AI/ML and partnerships such as SEWA. A key development is the ECMWF Member and Co-operating States’ commitment to transition to open access for ECMWF data, which is viewed as an important milestone in support of EW4All.  

Related Activities

ECMWF’s roadmap to open data  

Since 2020, ECMWF has progressively expanded access to key forecast and reanalysis datasets under its open data policy.  

In parallel, the Copernicus Climate and Atmosphere Services, operated by ECMWF, offer openly accessible data and tools that can be used to inform risk assessment, preparedness, and early action planning. These services are available through cloud-based platforms designed to facilitate seamless integration with regional systems. 

Other ongoing projects at ECMWF in support of stakeholders in Africa