The African Centre of Meteorological Applications for Development (ACMAD), the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS) have launched the African Summer School on Artificial Intelligence for Weather and Climate Modelling, a new initiative to build AI capacity across the continent’s weather, climate, research and early-warning institutions.
The 2026 Summer School, taking place from the 19th to the 23rd of October in Kigali, Rwanda, will introduce participants to AI and machine learning for weather forecasting, climate modelling, downscaling, bias correction, extreme-event detection and impact-based early warning. The programme is designed for early- to mid-career professionals working at the intersection of climate science and data.
The Summer School will combine expert-led lectures, keynote sessions, hands-on coding workshops, peer learning and group project work. Training will use real African weather and climate datasets to ensure practical relevance, enabling participants to evaluate, adapt and responsibly integrate AI into institutional and operational workflows. The initiative responds to a gap in Africa’s capacity to apply AI in climate modelling, where limited computing resources, expertise and observational networks have constrained progress. AI approaches offer significant opportunities by complementing numerical models, improving forecast post-processing and enhancing local-scale predictions.
The Summer School is part of ACMAD’s broader plan to establish AI summer schools for African meteorological professionals, build an African community of AI practitioners and develop cloud-based computing environments for experimentation. ACMAD is also working towards developing AI models designed specifically for African conditions, in partnership with institutions such as ECMWF, universities and research organisations.
The programme builds on existing WMO-supported work in Africa, including the Advancing Nowcasting with Deep Learning Techniques (ANDeL) project, which uses satellite data to develop short-term rainfall forecasts for West Africa where weather radar coverage is limited. The WMO’s 18-month project, launched in June 2025 with financial support from Fondation Lombard Odier, brings together WMO, UNHCR, Microsoft, ACMAD and National Meteorological and Hydrological Services to deliver impact-based forecasts and warning systems.
The overall objective of the Summer School is to strengthen Africa’s capacity to apply AI in climate modelling to improve climate information services and support disaster risk reduction. By equipping early-career professionals with practical AI skills, the initiative aims to build a pipeline of expertise that can drive innovation in weather and climate services across the continent.
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