Climate research in Africa

Many countries in Sub-Saharan Africa are suffering terribly from the impacts of climate change and are reliant on research in this area. Supported by Germany’s Federal Ministry of Education and Research, the DAAD provided funding for African postdocs working in climate impact research from 2020 to 2023 within the framework of its climapAfrica programme.
Nigeria in West Africa was hit by severe flooding in the autumn of 2022 – the worst in over ten years. More than 600 people lost their lives, while 2.5 million were dependent for a time on humanitarian aid. For a documentary about the disaster, which was to focus among other things on the role that climate change plays in such extreme weather events, the BBC was looking for an expert. In the end, they chose the young Nigerian climate researcher Dr Olasunkanmi Habeeb Okunola, a visiting research scientist at the Institute for Environment and Human Security of the United Nations University in Bonn.
The African researcher still finds it unbelievable that he was given the opportunity to speak in front of an audience of millions. “Nobody knew me three years ago. I was completely unknown outside my immediate sphere of influence in Nigeria,” he recounts. That changed only when Okunola successfully applied for climapAfrica in 2020, a postdoctoral fellowship awarded by the DAAD that is tailored specifically to the needs of African scientists after their doctorate. This is a difficult phase, in which researchers often lack the funding to continue their work at a high level and draw attention to themselves by publishing in international journals – an important prerequisite for successfully advancing their careers.
Funding research in Africa at the local level
This is where the climapAfrica fellowship programme came in, which ended in August 2023 after four successful years. It received a total of 4.5 million euros in funding from Germany’s Federal Ministry of Education and Research. “The core idea was to fund researchers in Sub-Saharan Africa directly at the local level rather than inviting them to Germany and equipping them with the necessary resources here,” explains Gudrun Chazotte, the DAAD head of section responsible for the programme. “This enabled us to build competence significantly at the individual level, while also strengthening the structures of universities and research institutions in Sub-Saharan Africa,” she says. “In our view, it is crucial for research in Africa to be properly funded on the ground.”
More than one hundred young researchers have been supported via two lines of funding over the past three years: conventional research funding with a monthly stipend that enabled the fellows to continue their scientific work. In a complementary step, the programme was opened to alumni of German funding organisations, who worked together with the fellows in the working groups. “This approach was used for the first time with climapAfrica,” explains Christian Schäfer, head of the Research and Studies section, who developed the concept. “And it proved so successful that we are now incorporating it into other programmes, too.” Another special feature of the programme was the extent to which the working groups were supervised in terms of content and were able to attend accompanying events organised by the DAAD. Speakers were engaged, workshops designed, important contacts established – such as with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). “All of this paid off and created genuine additional value,” says Schäfer.
The work of the seven working groups in total played a central role in this process. They adressed the topic of climate change from various specific perspectives: agriculture, land use, indigenous knowledge, meteorology, animal and plant research, climatology and biodiversity. The groups served as a platform that the climapAfrica postdoc fellows could use to get in contact with colleagues in their respective fields, regional and international experts, as well as practitioners from ministries, international organisations and NGOs, and establish a growing professional network across all of Africa.
Olasunkanmi Okunola, a member of the third cohort of fellows in 2021, joined a working group that aimed to explore the potential offered by indigenous knowledge for adapting to climate change. “The first key benefit for me was that I suddenly had the opportunity, thanks to the funding and through networking in the group, to work in various African countries.” Encouraged by more experienced climapAfrica fellows, he began to submit papers to prestigious international journals. “The hurdles there are very high. When I actually managed to place an article in a renowned journal, it marked a real turning point in my career.” The paper generated attention, other articles followed, and in the end the media became aware of him: in addition to his appearance on the BBC, he received invitations from CNN and RFI, and just recently the well-respected online magazine The Conversation included him in its team of African correspondents.

Working group summits: important network meetings with decision-makers
That said, attention alone is not enough to bring about genuine change. The research results must also find their way into political decision-making processes. But how can knowledge be successfully transferred to practitioners? “This was one of the key questions that the scientists in the working groups asked themselves,” reports Julia Schwarzenberger, the DAAD’s climapAfrica programme representative until the project ended. The goal of the eight working group summits that were held was to create at least the right conditions to facilitate this. Organised by the fellows themselves, the meetings served first and foremost as a platform for networking with important regional and national decision-makers.
A summit of the Meteorology and Climate Change working group that took place in Lomé, Togo, in early March 2023 was attended by the vice chancellor of the West African Science Service Centre on Climate Change and Adapted Land Use (WASCAL), which cooperates with climapAfrica, by the German ambassador and by representatives of NGOs. “There was also networking within Africa, which is essential when it comes to promoting these future leaders in climate research and climate action,” emphasises Julia Schwarzenberger. Benin, Cameroon, Niger, Nigeria, Sudan, Togo and Rwanda were all represented at the summit. “This gave rise to some exciting collaborations with a view to jointly advancing specific research projects. The multidisciplinary approach in research on the climate crisis is particularly relevant and constructive, which is why it was a focus for climapAfrica.”

One participant at the meeting in Togo was the climate researcher Dr Gloria Okafor, currently a lecturer at the Nigeria Maritime University’s Department of Meteorology and Climate Change. During her time as a climapAfrica fellow, Okafor was involved in the Climate Change and Meteorology working group and was able to profit hugely from the DAAD funding, as she explains. “First of all, the fellowship enabled me to advance my own research and helped me significantly expand my knowledge base. But the exchanges with colleagues from different countries and the writing courses for various formats were equally important. That helped me gain a foothold in an international research community and also act far more freely than I was used to in a university context.”
That’s music to the ears of Niels Böhm, who was the main person responsible for establishing and supporting the working groups in the climapAfrica programme until 2022. “Universities in Africa often have rigid hierarchies which make it difficult for researchers to develop their own topics if these differ from the focus of the institute in question. We wanted to create space in the working groups for them to share views and experiences on an equal footing with other scientists in the same field, and in this way to develop their own ideas.” He believes that it is vital to encourage researchers to focus on issues that are relevant to them and their local circumstances. “That was one of the main objectives of the programme,” explains Böhm, also highlighting one of the biggest challenges scientists face on-site: “Climate research is completely reliant on data. And in many cases such data is not available in sufficient quantities.”
Approaches to postcolonial research
Dr Nelson Chanza, a climate researcher and climapAfrica alumnus currently employed at the University of Johannesburg’s Department of Geography, Environmental Science and Energy Studies, is working on a solution to this problem. ClimapAfrica was also active in the Southern African region, supported by the Southern African Science Service Centre for Climate Change and Adaptive Land Management (SASSCAL). In his research, Chanza, who like Okunola was a member of the Climate Change and Indigenous Knowledge working group, is exploring the possibility of using indigenous knowledge about local weather changes to compensate for the frequently insufficient number of weather stations in African countries. “If rain is registered at one measurement station, this may lead to the false assumption that a wider area also experienced rainfall, even if it has in fact been unusually dry in the region. However, the local people of course know exactly what the weather was really like there.”

Chanza sees his research as part of a long overdue shift towards generating more knowledge from the African context. “Climate science is still largely dominated by Western research contributions,” he explains. “ClimapAfrica has been a fantastic opportunity for me and many other fellows to bridge that gap. You can see that just from looking at the many high-quality papers that have been published by fellows over the past three years.”
Like Olasunkanmi Okunola, Nelson Chanza is also continuing to benefit from the impetus generated by the DAAD’s funding with respect to knowledge acquisition and networking. From March to June 2023, he was a fellow in a new research project run by the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (MPIWG) and the Independent Social Research Foundation (ISRF). As the website explains, the researchers are to address the politics of knowledge formation in scientific, intellectual, economic, social, technological or environmental domains, and propose potential applications to real-world problems on regional or global scales. “We are naturally delighted that one of our fellows is able to contribute in such an extremely prominent position to such an important topic in the context of postcolonial research approaches,” says Niels Böhm. “One could hardly wish for a better outcome of the programme.”
(Klaus Lüber, September 7, 2023)