Combating land degradation is a major struggle across Puntland, hampered by the lack of comprehensive data on land cover and the classification of land for its potential and sustainable uses. Updated land cover data is of crucial importance for decision makers, as it serves multiple purposes, such as natural resource evaluation, land-use planning, land suitability classification and environmental monitoring.

For Somalia, weather and climate information is crucial to development and planning in all sectors of life. Since its establishment in 2002, SWALIM has worked closely with government line ministries, local and international NGO’s and other stakeholders to reinstate the Somali climate monitoring network, destroyed after the collapse of central government in the 1990’s.

Part of SWALIM’s mandate is to support climate monitoring in Somaliland, including drought and flood tracking tools and early warning information to enable rapid response to these hazards. In order to improve hydro-meteorological services, particularly flood and drought early warning systems, SWALIM routinely carries out maintenance on all the weather stations throughout the country to ensure the equipment runs correctly and efficiently.

In April 2016, SWALIM kicked off field surveys on land resources in the Iskushuban District of Puntland State as part of the broader FAO Resilience Programme in Somalia. In anticipation of the field surveys, a team of ten young professionals, drawn from the staff of the Puntland Ministry of Environment, Wildlife and Tourism

As an annual global event that has evolved rapidly over the past eight years, the “ICT4D” Conference brings together a broad assortment of international development professionals who are applying technological innovations in their work to promote development across the world.

SWALIM will be holding two “Information Sharing Days” for colleagues and partners to be held on July 12th and 13th, 2016, at the FAO Somalia offices in Nairobi. The open days are geared toward informing stakeholders on SWALIM’s activities and sharing best practices, allowing participants to discover emerging technologies and see firsthand the valuable and innovative approaches that SWALIM is using to achieve its mandate. During the sessions, participants will be given an overview of the award-winning SWALIM project and the outputs and services offered to clients and partners.

SWALIM continues to strengthen its partnerships with local disaster management authorities; HADMA, NERAD and SoDMA, in Puntland, Somaliland and Southern and Central regions, respectively. The partnerships aim to strengthen existing early warning systems in Somalia.  In July, a course on Disaster Risk Reduction and Early Warning will be held in each of the three regions to increase local capacity to reduce disaster risks and build resilient communities. The participants will be drawn mostly from Government ministries.

SWALIM has partnered with the Ministry of Agriculture of the Federal Government of Somalia (FGS) to monitor the climate inside Somalia. Together with the Ministry, SWALIM will install an additional four automatic weather stations and two manual rain gauges in the southern parts of the country where SWALIM’s monitoring network is sparse. The new AWS will be installed in Baidoa, Mogadishu, Jowhar and another location still to be determined.

To improve groundwater monitoring, SWALIM has acquired state-of-the-art groundwater monitoring equipment (known as divers) for installation in aquifers at sites in major cities across the country. The new divers record water level, salinity and temperature in boreholes twice a day, and transmit the data via satellite in near real time.  During the month of July, six automatic divers will be installed in Hargeisa, Borama and Berbera in Somaliland; and Garowe, Bossaso and Galkayo in Puntland. Installation in the south will follow in August.

The 2016 ICT4D Conference is a global event that has evolved over the past 8 years gathering together a large group of international development professionals who are applying innovations in technology to development work.