The Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS) Intra-ACP Climate Services and Related Applications (ClimSA) Regional Steering Committee held its third meeting at Hotel La Residence in N’Djamena, Chad from 06-07 April 2023.

The ClimSA Programme addresses climate information along the entire climate services value chain covering climate service generation and delivery, information access, user interface platforms, and capacity building of critical actors. In addition, it improves policy and decision making at regional, national and community levels.

The ClimSA programme in the ECCAS region is implemented under the African Union Commission regional delegation grant contract.  The African Center of Meterological Applications for Development (ACMAD) which also benefits under the same AUC’s umbrella provides technical assistance and support the implementation of the project in ECCAS region. One of the main support is the organisation and regional climate outlook forum in central Africa (PRESAC).

The objective of the ECCAS Regional Steering Committee (RSC) is to oversee the implementation of projects in the region. It reviewed project implementation status, work plans, progress reports and provided guidance for upcoming implementation period of the year 2023.

The RSC was attended by the Directors of National Meteorological Services from the 11 ECCAS Member States, as voting members. It was co-chaired by the African Union Commission (AUC) and the ECCAS Commission. The EUD based in Addis and technical partners such as WMO, Joint Research Centre, EUMETSAT, OACPS Secretariat, participated as observers.

The RSC approved the implementation of the decisions and recommendations of the 2nd Regional Steering Committee meeting as well as the 2022 ClimSA Project reports and 2023 workplans.

Cameroon was selected as pilot country for the implementation of the project in the ECCAS region and the RSC approved the selection of six students from the region to benefit from the scholarship for the ClimSA Masters programme. The ClimSA Regional Steering Committee also proposed to adapt and apply the terms and conditions of the Mwalimu Nyerere African Union Scholarship Scheme in line with the ClimSA Scholarship Scheme.

The RSC recommended that AUC and ECCAS to accelerate the recruitment efforts to ensure that the Project Management Unit (PMU) recruited and operational as soon as possible. CAPC-AC is intending to start now the demonstration phase to be designated as WMO Regional Climate Centre (RCC) which requires the revision of the staff regulations to be aligned with WMO standard requirements and the training efforts to deploy skilled human resources.

 The RSC recommended that the AUC TA Team and ECCAS Project Management Unit should ensure timely deployment of both the ClimSA (Climate) and PUMA Stations in order to allow better ownership by Member States and their timely and sustainable use in the production of climate services.

A special session was dedicated to learn more about the benefits of the Third Generation Meteosat (MTG) products and the WMO CREWS project.