BY OLAPEJU OLUBI
To tackle global food insecurity, the Agriculture Innovation Mechanism for Scale (AIM for Scale), at the ongoing COP29 World Leaders Climate Action Summit in Azerbaijan, launched its pioneering Innovation Package, focused on providing vital weather information to support farmers in adapting to the impacts of climate change.
This comes as a global consortium of partners, known as the Global Partnership to Scale-Up Weather Services for Farmers, has committed to mobilising over $1 billion in investments over the next three years to advance the AIM for Scale Weather Package.
The coalition includes the Gates Foundation, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the Asian Development Bank (ADB), the Inter-American Development Bank, the World Bank, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and NASA.
The initiative is further supported by the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for Adaptation and Resilience (PREPARE), India’s Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Community Jameel, the Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI), the University of Chicago’s Human-Centered Weather Forecasts and AI for Climate (AICE) programs, along with the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Systematic Observations Financing Facility (SOFF).
The Director General And Chief Executive Officer of the Nigerian Meteorological Agency (NiMet), and Permanent Representative of Nigeria with the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), Professor Charles Anosike, representing WMO community shared experiences of NiMet’s Seasonal Climate Prediction (SCP), and ongoing projects funded by the Gates Foundation in support of scaling up weather services for millions of farmers in Nigeria.
“I am looking forward to strengthening our agrometeorological systems to support #EW4ALL in Nigeria at the Nigerian Meteorological Agency.”, he said.
Dr. Amna al Dahak, Minister for Climate Change and Environment of the UAE, welcomed the launch of AIM for Scale following the achievements of the AIM for Climate platform, saying: “Today, with the launch of AIM for Scale, we are accelerating our efforts to find highly promising, climate-friendly agricultural innovations and breaking down barriers to their scaling.”
Nobel laureate Michael Kremer, Chair of the Innovation Commission for Climate Change, Food Security, and Agriculture and Chair of AIM for Scale’s Advisory Panel, highlighted the significance of these investments: “There is a wealth of evidence that smallholder farmers benefit from high-quality weather forecasts. Yet, the challenge of reaching hundreds of millions of farmers remains. AIM for Scale is a vital step toward filling this gap by leveraging new investments and global partnerships.”
