The Department for International Development (DFID) and Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) announce new funding of £20m for climate research in Africa. The 5 year programme ‘Future Climate for Africa’ (FCFA) will support research to better understand climate variability and change across sub-Saharan Africa. Its focus will be on advancing scientific knowledge, understanding and prediction of African climate variability and change, together with support for better integration of science into longer-term decision making, leading to improved climate risk management and the protection of lives and livelihoods.
In the second half of April 2014, DFID/NERC will launch a global open Announcement of Opportunity for world-leading multi-disciplinary research consortia to improve scientific understanding and prediction of extreme weather and climate change in sub-Saharan Africa and enhance the use of this information in real decisions. FCFA places the concept of Climate Services at its core and will specifically target sectors involved in longer-term decision making, such as infrastructure, water resources management, energy and urban planning. The partnership between DFID and NERC reflects the triple focus of the programme on scientific excellence, achieving impact and strengthening scientific capacity and international collaboration. The programme will take a co-production approach, providing information and services that are designed and tested with practitioners to inform real decisions. It will also place equal emphasis on extracting more value from existing climate information as generating new information and will draw on multiple disciplines to do this.
Further information is available at: http://www.nerc.ac.uk/research/funded/programmes/fcfa/