Kenya shifts from weather warnings to action before crises

Business premises marooned by floods in Nairobi. [File, Standard]

For a long time, the Kenya Meteorological Department (KMD) has been informing Kenyans about what is expected, where and the intensity of the weather forecast.

The information has been leaving out what action needs to be taken before the impact of, for instance, rain, floods or landslides.

Also, it has been doing the production of weather information alone, yet several parties need to be involved until it reaches the last-mile end user.

It is for this reason that Weather and Climate Information Services (WISER) established the ActionFirst initiative in Africa, which is funded by the UK government through the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO).

“ActionFirst is about moving away from just saying what the weather will be, do, and most importantly, what actions can be taken to mitigate against the impacts of extreme weather events,” said Hannah Kimani, Assistant Director, Public Weather Services at KMD the project lead in Kenya of ActionFirst.

Ms Kimani said this during an interview with Planet Action during a four-day second national sensitisation workshop on Action-Based Forecasting (ABF) that started on Tuesday and will end on Friday in Nairobi.

She said ABF, or impact-based forecasting (IABF), advocates for collaboration and co-production, since no single institution can be able to deal with disaster risk management on its own.

“For example, the KMD or the Kenya Meteorological Services Authority (KMSA) has information or they are able to produce the forecast, but they do not have the knowledge in terms of exposure and vulnerability. And that is why we need everyone on board to give us all the information that they have,” said Ms Kimani.

She added: “As the producer of weather information, we are not able to disseminate this forecast effectively, because we need media for example to be able to help produce the information to reach the lastmile user, Kenya Red Cross Society(KRCS) for example, to tell us that these are the areas from their experience in response are mostly affected by severe weather and we will need to incorporate the National Disaster Operations Center(NDOC), who coordinate response to disaster at the national level.”

She explained that they need a people-centered, all-inclusive early warning system, and that is where they’re banking on ActionFirst, which is also advocating for gender equity, disability and social inclusion (GEDSI), because the most vulnerable members of the community are ones affected by the extreme weather events.

Under this, the initiative seeks to come up with disability-friendly way of communicating weather forecast information including early warning alerts so that even PWDs can act after getting it.

During the workshop, it was discovered that weather information has not been reaching PWDs for instance due to the channel and gadgets used, poverty among other reasons.

Cosmas Juma, founder of Maendeleo ya Walemavu Organisation and who is visually impaired welcomed the initiative.

“For a very long time, PWDs have not been part of this conversation, despite having suffered for a long time considering they have different needs,” said Juma.

He added: “The initiative will change how PWDs are going to make decisions when they get weather information because we shall be getting it through different devices or channels. We believe as PWDs that there is nothing for us without us and it’s good that you’re bringing us on the table."

Juma said trust has also been a challenge because they did not know who is giving the information and its source because many PWDs have lost so many properties. After all, the information was distorting and didn’t speak to their language.

John Murigi from NDOC said after the new National Disaster Risk Management Bill was signed into law in May by President William Ruto, establishing the National Disaster Risk Management Authority (NDRMA), it will give it a legal framework and financial muscle for disaster management, to form county-level committees to improve emergency response.

The journey to come up with ABF, Ms Kimani said started last year in May 2025, when the WISER ActionFirst in East Africa was launched.

She said KMD, which is responsible for the East African countries on matters weather, is leading this project in collaboration with the UK’S Meteorological Office (Met Office), World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) and FCDO.

The initiative in May brought in Kenya all the East African countries together, permanent representatives with WMO, directors of meteorological services across the East African region, senior disaster managers, technical people from the disaster unit and even from the meteorological services.

“It started with a regional workshop in March of 2026, and what we've been doing is try to advocate for ActionFirst, and one of the things that we are doing in the whole East African region is national co-production,” said Ms Kimani.

She added: “This is where the meteorological services and the disaster management units are working together with the community, other stakeholders like the media and others to be able to produce impact and action-based forecasting with the main goal of creating resilience to extreme weather events and to make sure that people are safe from these extreme events.”

Ms Kimani said the project is running in all the East African Community countries including like Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Rwanda, Tanzania, Burundi, Ethiopia, Sudan, South Sudan, Somalia, where each country is doing its own national level of production.

Peter Murgor, head of disaster risk reduction and management at KCRS while speaking virtually lauded the initiative, saying after the information has reached the people, the ABF will spell out relevant agreed upon actions and finances needed to help for instance evacuate people.

He however, called for availing of the resources to financé actions.

“The crux of the matter in all this conversation is how to come up with finances to implement actions after information has reached the people. There is now a need to see how to use existing mechanisms including the recently launched Disaster Risk Financing (DRF) Strategy 2026–2030, to reposition resources through lobbying for annual budgetary allocations otherwise this initiative will be futile,” said Murgor.

The initiative, Ms Kimani said has a timeline and needs to come up with a technical working group on ABF that will guide how this process is going to be done.

“And then we also need to come up with the implementation plan, which is just a starting point, a draft of how we envision ABF, how do we want to implement this initiative and which we will continue improving as we move along.”

She added: “Because this is a pilot, we are expected to have finished this first phase by end of September this year and then subject to availability of other funding, we may see a continuation of the project.”

And in Africa the same co-production is happening as well in the South African countries led by the Regional Specialised Meteorological Center in Pretoria, South Africa, which she said the Kenyan team have visited to learn best practices.

Ms Kimani said the ABF is going to be a game changer in how Kenya responds to and prepare for upcoming weather-related impacts compared to what we have been doing in the past thanks to embracing aspect of co-production.

 “And as I said before, we may not have all the information that we need. I do not know, say for example, someone in Kisumu, Nyandarua or Tana River, I may not exactly know what their priority hazards or what impacts would emanate from any severe weather event, channels of communication they prefer, whether they even understand the information that we give them as KMD and use them and be able to take action,” said Kimani.

She said for the first time, they have been able to recently produce forecasts in Braille, to meet the needs of the visually impaired.

But from that, she said they also learned that not every visually impaired person is able to read using Braille, which was an eye-opener for them.

Kimani said ABF seeks to ensure that they now work in a coordinated manner with stakeholders like the Water Resources Authority(WRA) and KenGen, who are mandated to monitor the river and dam water levels to inform people living along, around or downstream them on impending flooding due to bursting banks and releasing excess water in dams, respectively.

It also brings in the Communications Authority of Kenya (CAK), which will work to ensure that media houses incorporate a disability-friendly way of broadcasting.

“We have issued licences that have conditions for service delivery and we have a rollout plan. In the licensing conditions we have required the service providers broadcasters, telecommunication including postal and courier companies to ensure universal coverage and where they are unable to go and can prove that, we have a kitty called Universal Service Fund to identify specific access gap so that we can go there and build a communication service to serve that community in an accessible, affordable and sustainable way,” said Derrick Simiyu, who works at the compliance and enforcement section of CAK.

Joan Kiama, legal officer - regulatory affairs at CAK said the authority is working on UN-led Early Warning for All Initiative (EW4All) on the third pillar, in conjunction with other leading agencies in disaster response, which they are spearheading to ensure that communication reaches to all targeted people in a timely manner through English ad Kiswahili first through an alert to let them know an impending danger to take necessary action before using other vernacular languages.

According to Ms Kimani, the ABF initiative seeks to identify each institution or each role to play or in the whole disaster risk management value chain.

Kisumu and Elgeyo Marakwet counties are going to be the pilot counties thanks to their being prone to floods and landslides.