The Rain for Africa (R4A) project aims at providing agricultural advisory services to farmers based on the best available weather and climate information at their specific location to help improve the quality and quantity of food production in a sustainable manner. Weather information from SAWS is enriched with algorithms from ARC to assist farmers with determining the best dates to plant, spray, irrigate or harvest. These advisories are made available via the HydroNET webportal, AgriCloud Smartphone App and USSD service.
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AgriCloud in the media: Pula Imvula Magazine In Pula Imvula Magazine's June issue of 2019, the article 'Get this weather app on your cell phone' by Nico Kr... -
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Successful Rain for Africa Developers Week creates new advisories for farmers In April 2019, the 4th and last Rain for Africa Developers Week (R4A) took place at the HydroLogic offices in ...
To plant, spray, irrigate and harvest at the exact right time, access to reliable weather and climate information is of key importance.
Selection of Rain4Africa products
To meet the needs of different user groups, R4A aims to provide easy access to the best available historical, actual and forecasted weather and climate information in Southern Africa
User Groups
Small-scale & commercial farmers
Via the AgriCloud USSD and Smartphone App, R4A offers farm specific advice. Weather information from SAWS is automatically translated into farm specific advice via smart algorithms developed by the ARC to facilitate higher crop yields and more efficient use of seed, water, pesticides and fertilizer.
Meteorological services
The R4A weather toolbox allow NMS's to access the R4A weather and climate information and to connect own data sources to enhance data quality for local situations. Web-applications offer easy access to the data for internal or external stakeholders. Training is provided to optimally benefit from R4A services.
Added value providers
The R4A project invites interested service providers to join and to develop added value services. R4A provides a powerful set of API's that provide easy access to R4A weather information from SAWS and and agricultural advisories from ARC and ease the development of added value information and applications.
Weather sensitive industries
Access to reliable weather data is of key importance for weather sensitive industries like the food, water, energy and insurance sectors. Via HydroNET the best available R4A weather information from SAWS is now accessible via easy to use web applications and automated Word reports. More information: HydroNET website.
The best weather and climate information for (semi professional users) enhanced with locally collected data, which offers weather and crop advice for free to small scale farmers.
Rain for Africa: a G4AW project
R4A is a Geodata for Agriculture and Water (G4AW) project. G4AW improves food security in developing countries by using satellite data. Netherlands Space Office (NSO) is executing this programme, commissioned by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
