Institute donates 20 raingauges to NiMet
The International Crops Research Institute For The Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) on Wednesday in Abuja donated 20 raingauges to Nigerian Meteorological Agency (NiMet).
ICRISAT Country Representative Nigera, Mr Hakeem Ajeigbe, said the institute would further donate more to strengthen the output of NiMet.
ICRISAT is an international organisation which conducts agricultural research for rural development, headquartered in Patancheru (Hyderabad, Telangana, India).
It has with several regional centres in Bamako (Mali), Nairobi (Kenya)) and research stations at Niamey (Niger), Kano (Nigeria), Lilongwe (Malawi), Addis Ababa (Ethiopia), Bulawayo (Zimbabwe)).
It was founded in 1972 by a consortium of organisations convened by the Ford and the Rockefeller foundations. Its charter was signed by the FAO and the UNDP.
According to him, the institute is ready to fully partner with NiMet on climate information generation.
Mr Pierre Traore, the Principal in-Business Researcher (Digital Agriculture), West and Central Africa Region, said that the productivity of the equipment donated to the agency would help to reduce the cost of climate information collection.
He further said that the local data that would be generated by the equipment would help boost the outputs of local farmers.
“We believe it is very important to reduce the cost of climatic information collection. As Africa, we live in tropical climate. Rain falls rapidly over space. We do know that NiMet need to offer effective information.
“We think that these critical instruments will help to generate data that are local and to have the local data are affordable. These are the two main objectives of the equipment.
“The equipment is also easy to replace in case it has defects or other problems,” he said.
The NiMet Director-General, Prof. Mansur Matazu, thanked the ICRISAT for the gifts, pledging that the agency will work closely with the institute.
He said that the equipment would complement the agency’s own in its various stations.
According to him, the 20 raingauges will be used to generate forecast for climate information prediction.
“ We can use this type of rainguages to measure the rainfall. Having this type of instrument coming at this critical time of the beginning of the growing season will increase the network-ness of our stations.
“It will definitely increase the position of our forecast especially for our users that come from rural communities; were they require local weather forecast. The available raingauges here will complement the one we have.
“ It will increase total data we generate to boost our forecast. This is a big way to improve precision climate forecast also to increase committees monitoring weather climate,” he said.
The director-general said the agency had planned to increase its partners at different strata. (NAN)