Resilience Live Episode 23 – Resilience Live 3rd Anniversary Episode
Air date: August 27, 2026
Beyond the Forecast: What Turns Early Warning Information into Action? Lessons from East Africa and Asia
Early warning systems save lives only when forecast information is understood, trusted, and acted upon. Drawing on evidence from East Africa (Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Sudan, and Ethiopia) and Asia (India, Indonesia, and the Philippines), this presentation examines the key enablers of turning climate and weather information into early action. Across East Africa, flooding remains the dominant hazard, while heat risks are increasing in urban centres such as Kampala, Dar es Salaam, Mombasa and more broadly in Sudan. In Asia, communities also face multiple hazards including flooding, cyclones, tsunamis, heatwaves, droughts, strong winds and landslides. These hazards drive disease outbreaks, infrastructure damage, displacement, and significant health and economic costs, with persons with disabilities experiencing disproportionately higher vulnerability. The core challenge is that forecasts often fail to translate into early action due to persistent issues in risk communication. This presentation showcases how the DARAJA programme is addressing these gaps through the co-production of forecasts, simplified icons, the use of local languages, trusted communication channels, feedback mechanisms, and locally developed Early Action Plans. The evidence so far is clear: inclusive, localized, and community-centred approaches, backed by strong institutional partnerships, are essential for transforming forecasts into meaningful early action and more resilient communities.
From Pilots to Systems: Building the Partnerships Behind Scalable Early Warning Services
How do people-centred early warning approaches move beyond successful pilots and become systems that can be sustained and scaled? The question is increasingly urgent: with the UN’s Early Warnings for All initiative targeting universal coverage by 2027, the sector’s hardest constraint is no longer forecasting science, but the institutions needed to carry it forward. This presentation draws on DARAJA’s scaling journey in East Africa – from early pilots in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, through expansion to Kampala and Addis Ababa, and into Sudan, where an early warning approach was co-designed with communities and stakeholders. The experience demonstrates that scaling is not simply about replicating an intervention: it requires sustained partnerships, institutional alignment, co-production and evidence of whether climate information reaches people and supports action. Drawing on baseline-to-endline evidence from Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania and Sudan, the session sets out a practical, five-part framework that participants can apply to their own partnerships.
The presentation will then briefly look ahead to Southeast Asia, including the Philippines, where Resurgence is currently building relationships and exploring potential partnerships on the ground. Rather than proposing a ready-made model, the focus is on how lessons from East Africa can inform a locally grounded approach that complements existing institutions and systems. The core message is simple: moving from pilots to systems requires investing not only in early warning technologies and information, but in the partnerships, institutions and delivery networks that allow people-centred early warning to work at scale.
About the Speakers
Joseph Manzvera is a multi-award-winning applied agricultural economist specializing in applied and action-oriented research for disaster risk reduction, non-market valuation of climate change adaptation strategies and food systems transformation, with a strong emphasis on community-centred, evidence-based solutions. He is currently a Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning (MEL) Associate at Resurgence. He holds a PhD in Applied Agricultural Economics and Policy from the University of Ghana, Legon, Accra, Ghana. With a strong portfolio of peer-reviewed publications and policy briefs, Joseph has established himself as a thought leader in climate services, agricultural economics, and applied MEL. His participatory and collaborative approach ensures that research and evaluation processes generate stakeholder-driven insights and locally relevant outcomes.
Jennifer Joy Gadher is Director of Business Development and Strategic Partnerships at Resurgence, where she leads the organisation’s business development function. She brings a decade of commercial leadership and operations experience across Asia-Pacific to the challenge of scaling climate resilience, following a career transition from pharmaceutical healthcare into climate adaptation and disaster risk reduction. She has secured £800k+ in innovation funding, led multi-year programmes and built strategic partnerships with the World Bank GFDRR, UNDRR and Red Cross Climate Centre, helping move early warning and resilience solutions from pilots toward scale across Africa, Asia and the Caribbean. Her work sits at the intersection of commercial strategy, climate resilience and institutional partnerships – connecting the organisations, resources and relationships needed to turn locally grounded solutions into systems that last.