Weather data systems in Africa remain very week and scattered, with limited capacity to provide real time, reliable and useable data that is critical to informing agriculture, crop water managemlent and research as well as all resilience decisions such as disater risk, insurance and health vulnerabilities. This deep structural weekness is also a reflection of very limitied capacities of regional and national met services to truly benefit from innovations digital and ICT technologies, epayment and insurance and work in partnership with the private sector. Transparent partnerships models must be supported.

The  Rural Afriica Task Force has incorporated language on weather data: “It also includes supporting the creation and maintenance of multi-purpose weather data systems across the continent as well as capacity building and open-access digital agricultural extension services” The DETF must mirror this statement and expand language to incorporate the need for addressing Agriculture, Rural Development, Food Security Resilience as core challenges for which scaled multipurpose weather data systems can be deployed using Digital and other innovations. Working together with Farmers' Organisations, NGOs, CBOs and the Private Sector must be organised in order to build up the strategy and operational components that underlie the spirit of the various Task Force Reports. These partnerships will be a condition for inventing the jobs of the future and offering jobs to African youth.