Sudan: Drought Monitoring co-development workshop

The International Water Management Institute (IWMI), in collaboration with the FAO Sudan office, conducted a co-design workshop for a drought monitoring tool on April 22, 2024. The event took place at the ILRI compass in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, under the Monitoring Water Productivity (WaPOR phase 2) project.

The workshop brought together stakeholders from various sectors in Sudan including Ministry of Agriculture and Forests, Ministry of Irrigation and Water Resources, Ministry of Production and Economic Resources, Hydraulic Research Center, Sudan Meteorological Authority, University of Khartoum, and Future University.

The co-design process aims to ensure that the application is demand-driven, perfectly integrated into the national systems, and offers a user-friendly interface. Therefore, the team adopts a co-development approach, closely collaborating with key stakeholders in Sudan throughout the design and development process.

The tool is specifically developed for mitigating drought risk and enables timely action to be taken by government agencies and relevant development organizations. The tool particularly focuses on the Gedaref state. The workshop successfully met its objectives which were:

• Identifying information needs and use in decision-making regarding drought monitoring in the Gedaref state.
• Co-designing the application features by leveraging available in-situ information (data availability and access) from stakeholders, the WaPOR portal, and available human and financial resources for operation and maintenance.
• Brainstorming the tool’s functionality, including UX/UI design, and offline vs online functionality, etc.
• Developing a roadmap for the tool co-development which includes identification of data requirements, data collection and sharing, training needs, timelines, and roles and responsibilities. The first version of the drought monitoring tool will be available by the end of June.