Home / World Habitat Awards / Winners / DARAJA: The Inclusive City-Community Forecasting and Early Warning Service

DARAJA: The Inclusive City-Community Forecasting and Early Warning Service

Bronze 2024 | Kenya , Tanzania

Outline

People living in informal urban settlements are particularly vulnerable to extreme weather, like storms, floods and heatwaves. Yet these same communities are often unable to access weather information that could help save their lives or prevent devastating damage to their homes and livelihoods.

DARAJA (Developing Risk Awareness through Joint Action) is a weather forecasting and early warning system specifically for residents of informal settlements. It operates in Kenya and Tanzania, where it provides regular, reliable weather information in accessible, easy-to-understand formats. The service also encourages people to carry out repairs to their homes and public spaces to minimise weather-related damage.

Informal settlement communities were heavily involved in the design of the service, which is run by global social enterprise, Resurgence, in partnership with a wide network of local organisations. DARAJA has received $2 million USD in funding through Resurgence and has an annual budget of $300,000 USD.

Since September 2018, DARAJA has provided almost 1 million people in Kenya and Tanzania with better weather information, and it is believed that accessing the service has led to a 300% increase in household repairs made in response to weather forecasts in Nairobi, and a 122% increase in Dar es Salaam.

The service is now developing in Sudan, Uganda and Ethiopia. It is also being adapted for use in small island states. DARAJA hopes 25% of the 1 billion people living in informal settlements worldwide will be able to access its services by 2030.

Full details

Climate change is causing an increase in extreme weather across the globe. Events such as flooding, storms, heatwaves and droughts are becoming more common and can be particularly catastrophic for the 1 billion people worldwide who live without a decent home.

As more people move to cities, they are often forced to make their homes on unstable land in ‘informal settlements’. These unofficial communities often lack basic services and infrastructure (like paved roads, drains and sewers), which means they are especially vulnerable to the effects of extreme weather. Despite this, many people living in informal settlements have no access to weather and climate information services. If they do, the information can be too technical and hard to understand or just not very useful for people in these communities.

DARAJA (Developing Risk Awareness through Joint Action) is a weather forecasting and early warning service. It gives people living in informal urban communities reliable and regular climate information so they can protect themselves and their livelihoods by taking preventative action ahead of major weather events.

The service operates in two cities in East Africa: Nairobi, in Kenya; and Dar es Salaam, in Tanzania.

Around 70% of the population of these cities live in informal settlements. Both cities are expanding as more people arrive from rural areas and they regularly flood during periods of heavy rain.

DARAJA is run by Resurgence – a global design, communications and consulting social enterprise specialising in managing urban climate risk and resilience. Resurgence works in partnership with local organisations operating in informal settlements to help people repair their homes and improve public areas to reduce the risk of weather-related damage.

Since September 2018, DARAJA has given more than 980,000 people better access to weather information. In five years, Resurgence hopes the service will be available to 250 million people living in informal settlements in 30 cities across the globe.

The project in practice

DARAJA is one of the first projects of its kind to focus on urban, rather than rural, communities. Resurgence researched how people living in informal settlements would prefer to access weather information (for example TV, radio, mobile phone etc), and then built a network of partners to co-design the service. These included forecasters, climate scientists, broadcasters, city officials, disaster management agencies, and, most importantly, the people who would be using the service. A social media campaign and community groups helped spread the word about DARAJA, getting people involved and letting them know how to access, interpret and use the forecasts.

Resurgence wanted DARAJA to be different from traditional institutional weather forecasts that were often difficult to understand. It involved community leaders representing women, savings groups, faith groups and youth groups, among others, in design workshops where they could help to shape the service as it was developed.

This community feedback helped DARAJA develop easy-to-understand icons in local languages. Information is tailored according to local needs and ranges from daily weather broadcasts on radio and television, to a ‘community communication system’. This involves trained community leaders sharing weekly and severe weather warnings through text messages, phone calls and word of mouth.

DARAJA means ‘bridge’ in Swahili and one of the main aims of the service is to build relationships between the informal settlement communities, climate information providers and city authorities. The community now has regular contact with local and central government officials and weather forecasters through seasonal meetings and a WhatsApp group.

In addition to providing essential weather information, DARAJA encourages people to actively protect themselves from adverse weather conditions. For example, by moving valuable possessions out of harm’s way and making repairs to their homes to improve structural safety and reduce potential damage.

These activities are supervised by local partners, Kounkuey Design Initiative (KDI) in Kenya, and Centre for Community Initiatives (CCI) in Tanzania. In Dar es Salaam, CCI also carries out work to improve community infrastructure, such as cleaning drains to increase water flow, strengthening sanitation facilities, and encouraging administrators to repair damaged school buildings.

Social and environmental impact

Resurgence successfully involved 67 organisations in DARAJA’s pilot schemes in Kenya and Tanzania. The community-centred approach to developing the service also led to the formation of new local groups, like Weather Mtaani (“Neighbourhood Weather”). DARAJA recruited volunteers to form this group, which filmed short public awareness videos on the importance of weather information for the community.

Research conducted before and after the launch of DARAJA involved more than 700 households across Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, showing that the service has reached many people in both cities. In Nairobi, 93% of informal settlement residents now receive weather information compared to 56% before. The same proportion of residents say they understand the information very well, with 80% saying the language used is the main reason for this. In Dar es Salaam, 93% of informal settlement residents receive weather information compared to 74% before. The most popular feature of the service is the advice provided (80%).

Thanks to DARAJA, people feel much more prepared for bad weather. The service has led to a 300% increase in household repairs made in response to weather forecasts in Nairobi, and a 122% increase in Dar es Salaam. This work includes raising building foundations, waterproofing walls, raising doorsteps, and clearing drains. Materials used for improvement works to homes and public spaces are sourced locally, so communities can maintain, repair and replace items easily.

Many people feel these actions have saved their household income and that they were able to protect their belongings (76% in Nairobi and 81% in Dar es Salaam).

Funding

Resurgence’s operating costs are covered by a combination of foundation grants and consulting income. The DARAJA project has received $2,000,000 USD in total from: the UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO); Weather and Climate Information Services for Africa (WISER); Climate KIC; the German Agency for International Cooperation (GIZ) and United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Africa.

Funding for DARAJA is secured until its scheduled completion in 2025. The service has an annual budget of $300,000 USD. This covers Kenya and Tanzania as well as developing projects in Sudan, Uganda and Ethiopia.

Resurgence has recently been awarded a $250,000 grant from the Lloyd’s Register Foundation for additional support for DARAJA in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda.

In Tanzania, residents spend about 50,000-100,000 TZS ($21 USD – $40 USD) on housing improvements. In Kenya, local partners KDI do not fund housing improvements (these are led by residents themselves). Instead, it finances the improvement of public and community spaces in informal settlements. Residents contribute 5% of the funding to these projects either through loans or payment in-kind by providing on-site labour.

Transfer and expansion

Resurgence has ambitious plans to scale DARAJA and work is already underway to expand the service in East Africa, funded by a two-and-a-half-year grant from the UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office through the Weather and Climate Information Services (WISER) programme led by the Met Office.

The DARAJA regional East Africa Scale Up Programme will focus on extreme heat and drought forecasting and reduction. Target countries and cities include Sudan (Khartoum), Uganda (Kampala), Tanzania (Dar es Salaam), Kenya (Nairobi), and Ethiopia (Addis Ababa). DARAJA currently works with Slum Dwellers International (SDI) in a number of these locations.

Resurgence wants to adapt DARAJA for use in small island states and has set up a pilot project in Kingston, Jamaica. This is being financed by the World Meteorological Organisation CREWS Initiative and the InterAmerican Development Bank.

Resurgence is also looking at how to finance DARAJA locally, rather than depending on international funding, and is hoping to learn from other urban initiatives to achieve this.

Despite its apparent simplicity, DARAJA has already had a positive impact on the lives of almost 1 million people. As the effects of the global climate emergency become more apparent, the need for its services will grow. DARAJA recognises this and is working hard to achieve its aim of making 1 billion vulnerable people safer from climate disasters by 2030.

Download your free copy of the full project summary

Case Studies

Agnella Malilima (31) is a resident living at the informal settlement of Kigogo Mbuyuni in Dar es Salaam Tanzania, staying at Kigogo with her parents and siblings in a 3-bedroom house.

Before the introduction of DARAJA project at Kigogo settlement Agnella admitted that the decision to not follow the weather information, adversely affected her in various ways; some days she did not go to work because she had to help her parents at home after being hit by floods or extreme high temperatures. This caused the delay in receiving her monthly salary of 200,000 TZS ($80) a couple of months in 2017 and 2018. When floods occurred, she had to use a lot of time to recover from the impacts of flood like removing mud at home, washing clothes with stains and supervising the masons to do the repair of the house. In between October – December, she bought the bricks costing her approximately, 150, 00/= TZS ($60) to do the repairing of their house. Her father is also a very old man and blind. When they got flooded, she had to spent a lot of time making more arrangements about her father on where she could take him so he could stay.

When CCI community team in Tanzania and Resurgence (the UK partner) started implementing DARAJA project at Kigogo around December 2018, she started to understand about DARAJA and after joining the saving group, she learned about federation activities and how they work with organizations such as CCI to address community problems relating to climate change, entrepreneurship, water and sanitation.

“After being told about the importance of paying attention to access, understand and using weather information to reduce climate change impacts, I directly thought about the suffering that myself, my father and family were experiencing. I started to volunteer in the project activities and I was at the frontline to engage more in the project. But what attracted me most it was the involvement of TMA (Tanzania Meteorological Authority – Tanzania’s national meteorological organisation). These are very professional and educated people but they decided to work closely with us to teach and ensure we understand all matters of weather and climate. It was amazing and I was later selected by Stella (at CCI) to be among 5 community members of Kigogo who were making SMS texts from the downscaled forecast we received from CCI and TMA to simplify the forecast in a language that majority of our people here understood, and in turn, so we could send to 20 community members and reach most of our settlement. I am proud of that moment and up to now I am still a good follower of these TMA information on a day-to-day basis as I can now quickly comment when the information is shared through DARAJA’s WhatsApp group.”

Agnella was able to attend her work on time during rainy seasons and was paid without losing out. She had planned to work and earn a specific amount of money, approximately 150,000/= ($60) that she later on used to repair the house and to raise a foundation of their house to reduce the flood water to easily enter through their home. She further said, as a family which has low income and living at low-income community, they have been able to save some amount that they were losing in the past. But now Agnella and her family are taking preventative measures earlier and advising her fellow community members, especially neighbors, to take such measures so they won’t get affected by extreme weather on an individual or community basis. Furthermore, as a family they have been able to help their father who is blind by helping him to move early to a safe place when their settlement is flooded.

Esther Lugulu is a teacher at Gilman Rutihinda Primary School, in the Kigogo Mbuyuni informal settlement in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania. She lives in Kigamboni municipal, more than 10 kilometers from where she works. Esther rarely used weather information in her day-to-day life, despite extreme weather and climate change affecting her work.

Esther said “At school we had low attendance of students… approximately 10% in each class during the rainy season, because most of the students live in this flood plain or lower Msimbazi basin.

By providing early warning weather information, the DARAJA project offered a practical solution to this problem. Esther explains “We did not foresee that, by just following and using detailed or advanced weather information, we could boost and maintain students’ attendance at school and contribute to a better academic performance. We learnt this through the DARAJA project.”

Esther became involved in the project when the CCI Tanzania community team and Resurgence UK went to her school to conduct a baseline study. She and the students were trained by TMA through a students’ club, and acted as DARAJA ambassadors, who in turn now educate their parents and guardians at home.

Esther acknowledges that the DARAJA project has improved conditions in the school community. There is now a dedicated room for students to store their bags when severe rain is forecast, and DARAJA’s training about the effects of climate change and extreme weather has catalyzed positive changes in personal hygiene, like better hand washing, tending to the school gardens and taking care of the environment in general.

Esther feels that students are more proactive in taking action and through DARAJA’s early warning weather information and training, she, her colleagues and students are better equipped to adapt to climate change.

James Kirika (37) is a resident living in the informal settlement of Laini Saba in the city of Nairobi, which is in the country of Kenya.

Where James lives in Laini Saba. It is populated with a lot of small businesses that are established along the railway and the streets. People have also built their homes and businesses on top of the drains. Before DARAJA was introduced, whenever there was heavy rainfall, these properties immediately got damaged and people’s lives were sometimes tragically lost.

James’ first experience of DARAJA was when Kounkuey Design Initiative (KDI) Kenya, a local community organisation, asked him, as he was a community leader in Laini Saba to become involved on a voluntary basis with the weather and climate service that was to be introduced in 2018, called DARAJA. Each leader in turn brought 5 people behind them, as any weather and climate advice and information would then be shared with their wider community.

KDI, James and the community leaders and teams were then brought into regular co-design and co-production meetings with Kenya Meteorological Department (KMD) and were involved in co-designing new weather forecasts that were: timely, in a language they understood and gave advance warnings of extreme weather with a colour code, where for example, red was deemed an emergency.

James and the Weather Mtaani leaders translated all the weather information from KMD regularly into Swahili (their local language) and gave this information, with advice, to their wider community.

In addition, before the rainy season in October, November and December, Weather Mtaani would organize with the communities to clear up their communal drains. The first time they did this, through DARAJA, in Laini Saba, they received the weather forecast on the Friday. On Saturday they did the community drain clear up, and by Sunday when the heavy rains came, for the first time they did not have floods in their homes or buildings.

The community was not just impressed but extremely grateful for this first preventative community action through the DARAJA project. The community had suffered the loss of lives through the floods; people were swept away from their homes from the heavy rains, as well as individuals lives lost on their motorbikes during flooding.

James said, “DARAJA came through as a saviour to people’s lives and how they were living. And it has prevented them from losing their property and losing their lives.

The challenge is always how to market Weather Mtaani to new residents so they get involved and see the benefits to their lives, so it is good to see that there is a new DARAJA project starting again this year in Nairobi’s settlements.”