Emmah Mwangi on how her team has worked on developping a prototype for drought forecasting:

"We went through a process of being able to interrogate the system, being able to engage the stakeholders and building their capacity as well as producing actionable information. Moving from what popped up first as a rainfall forecast towards a more actionable forecast product that is used.

We also engaged in discussions to ensure that the sustainability and ownership of the protoype. And to ensure that all the prototype information that is coming in, is able to continually be used to make the system more anticipatory. Enablers were: Strong potential of climate forecasts in this region, high predictability for October- December short rains"

According to Emmah Mwanghi from Forecast based Preparedness Action (ForPAc) project in Kenya, you can anticipate rainfall happening from October to December already in July. This gives us a window of  opportunity to act. What is needed to scale this up, according to Emmah? An enabling policy environment, especially a better coordination structure and anticipation funding.