By Geoffrey Otieno.
“It is for this reason and for the marvelous work that you people have done to this community by giving valuable weather and climate information that the team in Ethiopia is today here to learn and bench mark.”
Over the past five years, farmers in Taita Taveta County have greatly benefited from information on weather, agriculture, climate change and food security thanks to the partnership between SIFA FM and the Agricultural Climate Resilience Enhancement Initiative (ACREI).
Since 2018, ACREI has been developing innovative mechanisms for down scaling of climate information. The project aims to improve adaptive capacity and resilience to climate variability and change among targeted farmers, agro pastoralists and pastoralist communities in Ethiopia, Kenya, and Uganda.
Taita Taveta County in Kenya was selected as one of the targeted locations in Eastern Africa due to its semi-arid climate conditions, with increasing frequency of climate induced shocks on its agro pastoral communities. The program was officially launched in October 2019.
After selection, media practitioners in Taita Taveta were taken thru a four-day training and they agreed outcome was that they would play roles in disseminating weather and climate information to the end users to help with the ACREI projects. However not all media took interest to be part and only a few journalists from Taita Taveta participated. Linda Akoth and Lina Mwamachi were among those who remained committed.
Through the project with the productions of Lina and Linda, SIFA FM Voi broadcasted weather and climate information to the communities in Taita Taveta through radio talk shows, news reporting, vox pops from field visits, mentions and feature stories about Agriculture, Food Security and Climate Change. The station also dedicated one day per week to give weekly weather forecast during morning and evening shows, monthly forecast and seasonal forecasts.
The efforts paid off as the station was alter awarded for the Best Media House in Taita Taveta county in dissemination of Weather and Climate information during the October –December 2019 rainfall season, while Lina and Linda got first and second position respectively as best journalists under the same category. The two were invited for IGAD-ICPAC event in Ethiopia. In 2021 the two journalists participated in Climate Action Awards East Africa and Linda emerged as second runner-up under the category of Women for Results and Media for Climate (Radio). In 2022 Linda bagged an award in the Agriculture and Food Security Category in the first edition of Association of Grass-root Journalists Kenya (AGJK).
The ACREI Project media works especially from Sifa FM Voi has impacted the community who are now using weather and climate information to boost their food production, family income and nutrition, as well as fight climate change. It is due to this success that the station was honored to receive guests from Ethiopia on 23rd Feb 2024 who came to benchmark on the project which Sifa Fm has been part of. The delegation of twelve members was led by Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Program and Project Planning Specialist in Ethiopia Shawel Moreda and Abed Mbatha the Taita Taveta County FAO Coordinator. While introducing this team Mr. Moreda said that FAO as an organization is impressed by the work the media did and indeed put Taita Taveta on the map.
“It is for this reason and for the marvelous work that you people have done to this community by giving valuable weather and climate information that the team in Ethiopia is today here to learn and bench mark,” he said.
‘We are implementing a similar project in Ethiopia and wish to learn from you so that we can do the same to the team in Ethiopia,” he added.
Linda Akoth who is also the Station Manager, had this to say about the visit. “This is a great privilege and a humble experience to be visited by this delegation. It shows that the efforts we have been putting in the dissemination on information has had a great impact on the lives of our listeners to a level that our work can now be used as a case study for implementation outside the country. We also thank FAO team for the work they put in training us so as to give out the best and help in meeting the ACREI project objectives”
ACREI is a partnership program between Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), World Metrological Organization (WMO) and Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), with financial support from the Adaptation Fund
Additional Information by
FAO Media Release
