Zain

Mobile Communications to Revolutionize African Weather Monitoring

·         Zain partners Global Humanitarian Forum, Ericsson and WMO to deploy up to 5,000 weather stations at cellular sites across Africa, where less than 300 are reporting today

 ·         “Weather Info for All” initiative will increase dissemination of weather information via mobile phones to users and communities, including remote farmers and fishermen
 
·         First 19 stations deployed more than double Lake Victoria region weather monitoring, where 5,000 people die every year due to storms and accidents
 
GENEVA, June 18, 2009 – The Global Humanitarian Forum and its President, former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, together with mobile telecommunications company Zain, Ericsson, and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), today announced a major initiative, dubbed “Weather Info for All”, to radically improve Africa’s weather monitoring network in the face of the growing impact of climate change.
 
A recent Global Humanitarian Forum report estimated that climate change is responsible for some 300,000 deaths each year and over 100 billion US dollars worth of economic losses, mainly because of shocks to health and agricultural productivity. Sub-Saharan Africa accounts for close to a quarter of these losses, and is the region at the most immediate risk of droughts and floods. Agricultural yields in some areas are expected to fall by 50% as early as 2020.
 
The Global Humanitarian Forum initiated this collaboration in response to Africa’s severe gap in weather information highlighted at the Forum’s first annual event. The members of the initiative will deploy 5,000 new weather observation stations across Africa, providing a massive increase in crucial information to predict and manage climate shocks.
Africa has a network eight times below the WMO minimum recommended standard, and less than 200 weather stations that meet WMO observation requirements, compared to several thousand each in Europe, North America, and parts of Asia. The 5,000 weather stations will be installed at new and existing mobile network sites throughout the continent over coming years, in what promises to save lives and bring increased economic opportunity to tens of millions of people.
 
An innovative public-private partnership on a unique scale, the initiative relies on the core business of telecom. Zain, the leading operator on the African continent will host the weather equipment at mobile network sites being rolled out across Africa in coordination with Ericsson, the world’s leading provider of telecommunications equipment and services. Achieving the 5,000 target will require additional operator commitment and external financing.
 
The launch was held at the Global Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction, where Kofi Annan said:
“The world’s poorest are also the world’s most vulnerable when it comes to the impact of climate change, and the least equipped to deal with its consequences. Today you find cell phone towers in almost every part of Africa. We have never been able to establish weather monitoring on that scale, until now. This is a great example for twenty-first century collaborative humanitarian and development work between public and private sectors.”
 
The initial deployment, already begun in Zain networks, focuses on the area around Lake Victoria in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. The first 19 stations installed will double the weather monitoring capacity of the Lake region.
 
Zain CEO Saad Al Barrak commented:
“It is truly wonderful that many communities across Africa will now have accurate meteorological information readily available.  Here we can see how mobile communications can play a key role in helping to improve both the quality of life and safety for people in the remotest parts of the world.”       
 
Mobile networks provide the necessary connectivity, power and security to sustain the weather equipment. Through its Mobile Innovation Center in Africa, Ericsson will also develop mobile applications to help communicate weather information developed by national meteorological and hydrological services via mobile phones. Mobile operators will maintain the automatic weather stations and assist in the transmission of the data to national met services.
 
Also present at the launch, Carl-Henric Svanberg, President and CEO of Ericsson, said:
“The massive expansion of mobile networks in Africa is the perfect opportunity for the telecoms community to collaborate with national partners to strengthen weather networks and systems across the continent. As the leading provider of telecommunications in Africa for more than 100 years, we are in a unique position to help forge these kinds of partnerships. We look forward to having more operators come on board to realize the full impact of the initiative.”
 
Approximately 70% of Africans rely on farming for their livelihood, or close to 700 million people, and over 95% of Africa’s agriculture depends on rainfall. Changing weather patterns due to climate change render obsolete traditional knowledge relating to agriculture otherwise reliable for centuries, creating a great need for meteorological information.
 
Also present at the Geneva launch was Michel Jarraud, Secretary-General of the WMO, the leading UN meteorological organization, which is coordinating involvement of national meteorological services participating in the initiative. Mr Jarraud said:
“For food production almost every decision is linked to weather parameters: rainfall, wind, temperature. We see this as a major pan-African effort to empower national meteorological services to provide enhanced weather information and services. This may prove to be the most important announcement for African meteorology in decades.”
 
 
The initiative will have an impact far beyond agriculture and disaster preparation as it also includes assistance to national meteorological services in training and technical capacities. Better weather information will support increased development in poor communities, in particular by allowing for access to microinsurance, which can be based on weather data indexes, such as rainfall. Each weather station can be a reference point for insurance products over a radius of 20kms, enabling an average of 5,000 farmers to insure their crops. Insured farmers have better access to microfinance, which can allow for large increases in yields and incomes in as little as one year, through the purchase of better seeds and fertilizers. The initiative will also increase the volume of information useful for scientists, as well as for the water, transport and energy industries.
 
While the weather information gap is particularly acute in Africa, the initiative would be open to later expansion into other affected regions.
 
A further partner in the initiative is Columbia University’s Earth Institute, headed by Jeffrey Sachs. Some of the initial installations are taking place in the Institute’s Millennium Villages, and the Earth Institute is contributing a sizable knowledge bank of climate scientists and researchers to the effort.
Jeffrey Sachs said:
“The Weather Info for All initiative of the Global Humanitarian Forum is highly important for vulnerable, often remote, farm villages all over the world”.
 
ENDS
 
Notes to editors
Photo and multimedia material available at: http://www.ghf-ge.org  

Global Humanitarian Forum report Human Impact Report: Climate Change – The Anatomy of a Silent Crisis available at: http://www.ghf-ge.org/programmes/human_impact_report/index.cfm

Read more about Millennium villages project at: http://www.millenniumvillages.org
 
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT:
Zain: info@zain.com  
Global Humanitarian Forum:  media@ghf-ge.org
 
About Zain
Zain is a leading telecommunications operator across the Middle East and Africa providing mobile voice and data services to 64.7 million active customers as at 31 March 2009. In terms of country footprint, Zain is the 3rd largest mobile operator in the world with a commercial presence in 24 countries.
 
Zain operates in the following countries: Bahrain, Burkina Faso, Chad, the Republic of the Congo, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Gabon, Ghana, Iraq, Jordan, Kenya, Kuwait, Malawi, Madagascar, Niger, Nigeria, Palestine (currently operating as Paltel Group), Saudi Arabia, Sierra Leone, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia. In Lebanon, the company manages ‘mtc-touch’ on behalf of the government. In Morocco, Zain owns 31% of Wana Telecom through a joint venture.
 
Zain offers innovative services in its markets such as ‘One Network’, the world’s first borderless mobile telecommunications network enabling customers when abroad to receive calls and sms without charge and to make voice and data calls at local rates throughout 19 countries in Africa and the Middle East. This service allows a customer to top up airtime in their home country or from more than 1,000,000 outlets within Zain’s ‘One Network’ footprint.

The Zain brand is wholly owned by Mobile Telecommunications Company KSC, which is listed on the Kuwait Stock Exchange (Stock ticker: ZAIN). Zain is listed in the Financial Times’ Global 500 Index which ranks the world’s largest companies based on market capitalization (http://www.ft.com/reports/ft5002008). Zain aims to become one of the top ten mobile operators in the world by end of the year 2011. For more, please visit www.zain.com  or email info@zain.com


 

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