The Ethiopian National Meteorology Agency has signed an agreement with the Ministry of Water, Irrigation, and Energy, the Ministry of Agriculture, the National Emergency Management Agency, and the Environment, Forest, and Climate Change Commission.
The agreement lays out a framework that is going to be implemented over the next two years to identify areas that are most susceptible to natural disasters and design prevention and mitigation measures.
Aside from contributing to combatting natural disaster, the agreement is also designed to better implement efforts to combat climate change and better develop the country’s meteorological abilities. It will be recalled that Ethiopia launched two satellites, one in December of 2019 and another in December of 2020, with enhanced meteorological capabilities.
The agreement between the governmental agencies, according to the National Meteorology Agency’s Deputy Director Kinfe Hailemariam, the framework was designed in accordance with international frameworks that espouse the same goals. He also affirmed that the framework aims to facilitate the provision of 9 weather control radar equipment to the agency; it currently only possesses one.
Besides the satellites that were launched over the past two years, the agency has been working diligently to modernise its operations. Over the past two years, it has been able to raise the number of automatic stations that it operates from 20 to 30, enhancing its early warning, climate control, and other related capabilities.
The latest effort that the agency has been integral to was the launch of cloud seeding technology in the country that has contributed significantly to the fall harvest and the drought issues that some regions of the country have faced in previous years.