After-Action Review of the Early Warning Messaging Activity under the Scaling up Early Warning and Anticipatory Action for Agriculture and Food Security Project (EWAA) in Zimbabwe
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Early warning messaging has been crucial to protect smallholder farmers’ crops, livestock and assets, as well as livelihoods. Collaborating with the government of Zimbabwe’s Meteorological Services department which provided updated forecasts for the targeted areas on a regular basis, and FAO facilitated the broadcast of these messages through various formats managed by the Ntepe-Manama Community Radio station.
During the 2021/22 agricultural season, farmers and households in the target wards received early warning and weather forecast messages twice a week to coincide with the Meteorological Services Department’s three-day forecasting period. Early warning and short-range forecasting information was broadcast to farmers in Gwanda, parts of Matobo and parts of Beitbridge.
The early warning messages were transmitted through the four local languages that are indigenous to the district; Sotho, Babirwa, Venda and Ndebele. This ensured that weather messages were simple enough for better understanding by the recipients.
The messages disseminated provided information on the weather conditions for the following three days. When extreme weather conditions were predicted, early warning information and corresponding advisories were broadcast to enable farmers to activate their coping strategies, and implement other pre-emptive actions to protect crops, livestock and assets.
An After-Action Review process was conducted to assess the impact of the messaging on the targeted farmers and derive recommendations for further improvement of the activity. The outcome showed that the messages influenced the farmers' short-term farming choices.