TITLE:
Assessing Weather Services for Rural Fishing and Farming Communities in Uganda
AUTHORS:
Patrick Kibaya, Ian G. Munabi, Frank Annor, John Baptist Kaddu
KEYWORDS:
Climate Change, Resilience, Early Warning Systems, Gender, Africa
JOURNAL NAME:
American Journal of Climate Change,
Vol.9 No.2,
June
19,
2020
ABSTRACT: Climate-related hazards like drought are associated with loss of life and lead to food insecurity in many parts of sub-Saharan Africa. Food insecurity, which affects more than 220 million sub-Saharan Africans, manifests as starvation that leads to more than 50% of children under the age of 5-years presenting as underweight for age in many communities on the continent. This household survey reports the means by which rural fisher folk and farming communities in Uganda gained access to early warning meteorological information. The survey covered five districts across different climatic zones in Uganda and recruited a total of 405 respondents with an average age of 41 years (SD 16). Economic activity was used to categorize each of the five districts into farming (crops and livestock) and fishing areas. The results showed that most respondents were unaware of drought as one of the climate-related hazards. Compared to respondents from the fishing communities, the respondents from farming communities were more likely to be receiving weather-related information (P-value