At the headquarters of Chad’s National Meteorological Agency (ANAM), Deputy Director Hamid Abakar Souleymane pointed to a motionless humidity gauge, demonstrating with a wagging finger how the equipment should be working. The hygrothermograph, like 80% of the outdoor devices meant to track weather in the capital, lay in disrepair, part of a larger struggle to maintain reliable weather forecasting across Africa.
The situation in Chad mirrors a widespread challenge across the continent, where broken and outdated equipment hinder efforts to track increasingly severe weather patterns. With climate change accelerating the frequency of extreme weather events, such as droughts and floods, Africa’s inadequate weather data infrastructure leaves millions vulnerable.
At the COP29 climate talks this Wednesday, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for urgent investment to address a critical shortage of weather data and funding. He highlighted a U.N. goal to establish universal early warning systems by 2027 to help at-risk communities prepare for extreme events. However, meeting this target is particularly daunting for Chad, where funding and training are scarce.
“The reliability of weather information depends on the resources invested in producing it,” said Souleymane, underscoring the agency’s need for financial support and skilled personnel.
According to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), Africa’s weather observation network is the least developed in the world, with fewer stations meeting global standards than in Germany alone. Many African stations, though marked on paper, do not function consistently or share data, said Albert Fischer, director of the WMO Integrated Global Observing System.
By the third quarter of 2024, only two out of 53 African countries under the WMO were fully compliant with the basic requirements for ground-level observation stations. This lack of preparedness has devastating effects. Floods are now more frequent across Africa than in Europe and North America combined, and due to limited warning systems, they claim four times more lives on average.
As the demand for urgent climate adaptation grows, ANAM continues its relentless call for resources. The agency, along with others across Africa, hopes that global climate discussions will lead to meaningful support that can save lives by strengthening early warning systems on a continent most affected by, yet least responsible for, the climate crisis.