Catherine Nakalembe

These are some of the recommendations, some of the things you can do.

That would be so much better than my next bulletin on drought in Somalia, for example.

But creating that knowledge by working with local people is such a long process that doesn't fit a regular timeline.

My work, if you can believe it, involves a lot of WhatsApp groups of trying to figure out things.

I'm going to tell you about a project that I have that was like literally blood and sweat, love and care.

So from my long work looking at drought analysis, et cetera, one of the biggest problems we have, and there lies the solution, is in order to predict a drought...

you have to know how much water is available to the plant.

And so when you look at the moisture in the soil, it gives you an idea of what the plant might look like two weeks, three weeks, four weeks in advance.

And so there's this cool satellite that was launched in July and

While it was going to be launched, some of the preparation that is done is you have to have these calibration centers or stations, ground calibration.

So in order for us to know what the satellite is measuring and what the true value is, we need sensors on the ground.

And in the U.S.

and in Europe and in India, there are huge calibration networks.

that are part of this mission planning, et cetera.

So when the satellite launched, when the data start coming in, they can calibrate and know what the true value of what is at the sensor is for what is on the ground.

But guess what?

There's not a single station in Africa.

Yes.

There's not a single reporting live station in Africa.

There was not a plan for like a calibration infrastructure for this upcoming mission that is amazing for the whole continent, where the biggest burden of drought is, I should say.