By Delia Gutiérrez. Posted January 20, 2016

The workshop was held in Abidjan ((Ivory Coast), from 23 to 27 November 2015, with participation of representatives of the meteorological services of the 17 participating countries (16 countries members of the Conference AFRIMET and Chad) together with WMO and AEMET.

The METAGRI pilot project was launched in 2008 in the context of the programme of cooperation AFRIMET of AEMET and WMO. Funded by AEMET, 160 educational roving seminars were held until 2011, and about 3500 raingauges were distributed among farmers from the 16 countries members of the Conference AFRIMET. The second phase, METAGRI OPS, has being mainly funded by the Government of Norway, through WMO, although the AFRIMET program was still linked to the project and offered some support. From 2012 to 2015, 260 new seminars have been held, and more than 4500 rain gauges have been provided to the farmers of the 17 participating countries. Technical training has also been provided to the meteorological services, and the encounter with the media for the dissemination of meteorological information has been fostered.

During the workshop the successes, difficulties and lessons learned have been examined, and the lines of work of the new METAGRI SERVICES project have been outlined. The new project will be submitted to the next Conference of Directors AFRIMET which will soon be convened.

More information can be found on the webpage of the workshop,

https://sites.google.com/a/wmo.int/metagri-2015/