The call was made by the Director-General of the Ghana Meteorological Agency (GMet), Mr Stephen Komla, at the opening of a two-day conference on climate change in Accra yesterday.

According to him, despite the tremendous contributions meteorological institutions were making to national development, they still lacked the needed funds, tools and other logistics to work with.

“For the continent to get the best from meteorological institutions, African governments must pay attention to issues that hamper their activities,” he said.

The conference, organised by the African Centre of Metrological Application for Development (ACMAD) and sponsored by the African Development Bank (AfDB), is being attended by parliamentarians from 30 African countries.

Crucial role

Mr Komla said without meteorological institutions, economic sectors such as agriculture and health would suffer because governments might not get the right and accurate information to undertake any development in those areas.

He said just because contributions from meteorological institutions “cannot be quantified in terms of the revenues they generate does not mean we are ineffective”.

ACMAD role

The Director-General of ACMAD, Mr Adama Alhassan Diallo, said the conference was organised to provide a platform for parliamentarians to share and discuss cooperation among themselves and to develop strategies towards their improvement.

He added that following a research conducted by the centre, it was revealed that most countries did not have strong meteorological institutions because of the lack of funding.

For the continent to extract the best from meteorological institutions, Mr Diallo said parliamentarians must come up with ways to resource them adequately, particularly in the areas of logistics and human resources.

The Minister of Communications, Dr Edward Omane Boamah, in a speech read on his behalf, urged legislators on the continent to give priority to meteorological institutions when it comes to funding and prioritisation of government programmes.