The groundbreaking early warning system that could avert famines

Global initiative encompassing state-of-the-art satellite imagery and experimental meteorological data could protect against food insecurity

In late 2020, one of the worst droughts in several decades began to strike Kenya. But farmer Amos Kazungu, who cultivates two and a half hectares of land in the country’s semi-arid eastern county of Kilifi, knew it was coming months in advance.
The 54-year-old had received weekly SMS messages warning that the expected rainy season was barely going to materialise and providing him with advice on what kinds of agricultural methods and resistant crops he could use to beat the drought.
“There was so little rain that the river dried up,” says Kazungu, shaking his head in exasperation as he recalls the memory from within the shade of a tree by his fields.
The text messages that Kazungu received – consisting of a few precise sentences in English and Swahili, Kenya’s two official languages – are part of a groundbreaking international effort to fight famine: early warning systems.
While the messages are by design made as simple as possible, so that the millions of Kenyan farmers who receive them can understand and act, they form the crucial end point of a multi-pronged, global initiative that encompasses state-of-the-art satellite imagery, experimental meteorological data as well as sweeping collaboration across the national government, international agencies and NGOs, and regional field teams.
The concept is that by giving farmers early warning for impending droughts, floods or other extreme weather, in some cases several months in advance, they are able to adapt and take action accordingly: switching crops, planting seeds earlier or later, vaccinating or selling livestock, or building flood defences and irrigation systems.
“We have to take the initiative, we cannot just allow famine to ravage the country,” says Nelson Mutanda, head of early warning systems at Kenya’s National Drought Management Authority (NDMA), one of the main organisations involved.
With the help of a field visit from agricultural extension officers, Kazungu followed the advice and began to dig “zai pits” – one square metre basins with a layer of straw and grass at the bottom that help to retain water. This was not a simple task: it took him two weeks of tough labour to prepare the 500 pits required. Yet as a father of 12 children, the Kenyan farmer knew that he had little choice but to act.
Kazungu was also told to plant drought-resistant varieties of maize, such as DK777 and PH1, which can be harvested months quicker than others, and pigweed, a crop that only requires watering once a week and that matures in just three weeks.
The impact was huge: Kazungu harvested 70 sacks of maize over a hectare – double the 30 or 40 sacks he expected to reap, and the pigweed proved a reliable crop. “It was very, very effective, even though there was little rain, it still worked,” he says.
These pre-emptive efforts in Kenya are thought to be a model of how the planet can help to boost food production resilience and reduce the likelihood of famines in the face of more extreme, unpredictable weather caused by manmade climate change.
The Horn of Africa suffered its worst drought for at least 40 years between 2020 and 2023, with six consecutive failed rainy seasons resulting in 36.4 million people going hungry. In Kenya, one of 8 countries in the region, it affected 4.5 million people.
A report by World Weather Attribution, a grouping of scientists connected to the World Meteorological Organization, found that, taking a conservative estimate, the drought was about 100 times more likely due to anthropogenic carbon emissions.
As the threat of climate and food security shocks rises, systems that can detect and respond to them quickly are seen as a key part of the answer.
“Early warning systems are extremely important for many reasons,” says Krishna Krishnamurthy, who wrote a paper for the Global Food Security journal analysing the warning systems in the Horn of Africa. “Acting early is so much more effective.”
The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAid) has estimated that $163 million (£124 million) in aid could be saved in Kenya, Zambia and Ethiopia every year by making early humanitarian interventions compared with late responses.
A separate report by USAid found that Kenya’s early warning systems have helped significantly improve food security: 500,000 fewer people needed humanitarian aid during severe droughts in 2016 and 2017 compared to similar droughts in 2010 and 2011. A spokesperson for USAid also said that since Kenya’s 2011 drought struck, the response time to such emergencies has reduced from 180 days to 21 days.
Acknowledging the effectiveness of the model, the UN Secretary-General António Guterres set out a goal in 2022 for every person in the world to be “protected from hazardous weather, water, or climate events through life-saving early warning systems” by 2027.
Kenya’s early warning system, which is the culmination of decades of development, is driven by a number of organisations including the NDMA, which was set up in 2010, the Ministry of Agriculture, and the Famine Early Warning System Network (FEWS Net), a USAid-funded body that provides resources and training.
Firstly, high level meteorological data is provided by international organisations like the Climate Hazards Center at UC Santa Barbara, which provides long-lead warnings of potential drought, before it is processed by Kenyan officials who, with the help of local monitors, track 58 indicators including rainfall, livestock migration patterns and crop yields, and determine the likely impact in specific areas of the country. In turn, farmers are warned of the predicted weather through mass communication networks such as SMS messages, radio and TV shows, as well as outreach teams.
“Our ability to predict is growing and it has improved a lot,” says David Gikungu, director of the Kenya Meteorological Department.
Over time, the quality of meteorological data has improved, bringing higher spatial resolutions, new innovative indicators such as soil moisture have emerged, scientists better understand the climate patterns in the Horn of Africa, and the system has begun to take account of factors such as conflict’s impact on food security.
Yet although Kenya’s early warning system is seen as one of the leading examples in Africa, experts say that there is a huge amount of room for improvement.
Farmer Kazungu is a fortunate case who benefited from training and support from the nonprofit PlantVillage, which is working in 22 of Kenya’s 47 counties, to help him learn the necessary agricultural methods to adapt to drought.
“This information needs to get to the ground,” says Daniel Njapit, a manager at the organisation. “If farmers know there will be drought in six months, they can prepare. It helps people make the right decisions.”
Yet only a fraction of Kenya’s farmers receive such support. Njapit and many others say that while the early warning systems are effective at detecting drought, there are huge shortcomings when it comes to communicating the warning to farmers, some of whom are illiterate. Even then, they may not have the technical expertise to adapt.
Others who have for centuries got by with traditional livelihoods have been resistant to change or to input from outsiders, who they fear will be exploitative.
“The biggest deficiency is how the information is given to communities,” says Njapit. “Often, it’s not done properly. The government is a step behind on that.”
In Kenya’s northern county of Marsabit, a largely rural and extremely arid region, the SMS system is not in place as officials are still gathering the phone numbers of elders and other community leaders, while in-person visits are costly given the extremely limited road networks, according to John Ougo, an officer at Marsabit county.
“A number of issues affect the emergency response like infrastructure challenges and locust invasion, perennial conflicts, banditry attacks and flash floods,” he says.
Wario Hasama, a 50-year-old farmer in Sololo, Marsabit, say that while he receives warnings by the radio and has begun to grow more drought-tolerant crops such as black-eyed peas and sorghum with the support of the county, prolonged drought means that he can do little. During the 2020-2023 droughts, his four cattle died and now all ploughing must be done by hand. At one point, they even ran out of seeds.
“If it’s bad we have to give up on the farm,” says Hasama, who has six children. “We just have to rely on government assistance.”
At the same time, the inherent difficulty in predicting weather, particularly extreme rainfall and flooding, is being “made even more challenging” by climate change, according to David MacLeod, an expert in climate risk at Cardiff University who is helping develop next-generation hydrological modelling to improve forecasting.
The UK Government is helping rural and urban communities in Kenya take early action against extreme weather through its WISER and PASSAGE programmes. “We continue to work with the Government of Kenya and communities to ensure systems and tools meet the needs of those vulnerable,” an FCDO spokesperson said.
This project was funded by the European Journalism Centre, through the Solutions Journalism Accelerator. This programme is supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
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