The Nigerian Meteorological Agency (NiMet) has been hailed as the leading meteorological agency in West Africa for its strides over the years.
This statement was made by the agency’s director-general, Prof. Mansur Bako at the Systematic Observations Financing Facility (SOFF) workshop in Vienna, Austria, co-hosted by ZAMG (Austrian Central Institution for Meteorology and Geodynamics).
Bako was in attendance as a peer advisor of the SOFF.
The conference, held in Austria from August 31, 2022, to September 2, 2022, was a follow-up to the first steering committee (SC) meeting back on June 29 to 30, 2022, which the NiMet DG/CEO attended virtually. At that meeting, the SOFF governance structure and programming criteria were adopted. This represented a major milestone in the preparation of SOFF activities to support eventual beneficiary countries.
The SOFF work plan was adopted by the SC for a three-year initial implementation period set to support 55 countries with readiness phase support by June 2025. Some objectives of the workshop are to realise the Paris Agreement of strengthening systematic observation and early warning systems; the sustainable development goal of strengthening environment monitoring for climate change mitigation, adaption and early warning and launching the Sendai Framework for substantially increasing access to multi-hazard early warning and disaster risk information.
Also, the SOFF workshop noted that to achieve the overall objectives of SOFF, most governments are unable to fund related projects, hence the need to promote and support public-private engagements. The SOFF was birthed to assist countries in realising these objectives.
Nigeria was identified and agreed to be one of the peer advisors to drive the SOFF process, which hinges on Nigeria’s contribution to meteorological services in West Africa and beyond.