AMMA WORKSHOP
(The Creation of The network "AMMANET")
Niamey, 25 - 28 of February 2002
 This meeting, organized by AGRHYMET and ACMAD, with the financial support of the IRD, of MEDIAS-France and of SCAC-Niamey, had as aim the bringing together of African scientists who had declared themselves interested by a participation in the program "African Monsoon" as suggested in the White book diffused in nearly 500 specimens to Universities, Institutes of research, Departments of Meteorology and Departments of Hydraulics in West and Central Africa. It represented the occasion to jointly discuss for the first time the objectives of such a project, in what way it could respond to the ambitions of organizations and African scientists and the modalities of their participation.

The workshop brought together more than 80 participants, including 24 African scientists (whose list is given in appendix) not residing in Niger and taken care of by the IRD (10 persons), MEDIAS (7), the WMO-CLIVAR (4), UNESCO (1) and the University of Leeds (2). A total of 25 French and British scientists also participated. The rest of the participants consisted of scientists of Niger republic and representatives of local institutions (ACMAD, AGRHYMET, DMN, DRE, EAMAC, ICRISAT, IGNN, University of Niamey). Five large fields of discipline were represented: physics and chemistry of the atmosphere, hydrology, agronomy-ecology-vegetation, health sciences.

STRUCTURING OF THE AFRICAN PARTICIPATION

To maintain the contact with all the Africans who took part in the meeting or who expressed their interest, it was proposed to set up a network "AMMANET", which will be supported by MEDIAS-France. This site will provide information relating in particular to training, the invitations to tender with their due dates, the reports of meetings, the bibliographic references.

The African follow-up Committee :

A committee of African follow-up was set up, with the initiative of the Africans present, to evaluate projects to be transmitted initially to the CCMA for its opinion before response to the invitations to tender. It will be involved in the organization of the AMMA meetings, conferences and seminars. The follow-up committee will have also a role to play in the animation of the network " AMMA-Net " and in the management of the AMMA-Web site. The follow-up committee, whose set-up will evolve to ensure the most possible balanced representation of the African community involved in AMMA, has a correspondent in each country, charged to following and rendering account of the activity of "AMMA" on the national level.

FUTURE COMMITMENTS

  • Drafting an international plan of program : The White Paper (Book), an emanation of the French scientific community, was used as a basis for the
    discussions engaged with the African scientists and the institutions which support them. These discussions, the same as the contacts established in Europe and in the United States, revealed a certain number of priorities and constraints, as well as of desirable extension - in particular in the domain of oceanography - which must be taken into account to produce a really international plan of program. The African participation in the drafting of this document will be done through the African follow-up committee set up following the meeting in Niamey. Technically, the dialogue between the various communities will be facilitated by the AMMA web-site and AMMA-Net, which will be managed by MEDIAS-France.
  • Search for fundings to ensure the participation of the African teams :
As previously indicated, the AMMANET web-site will provide all the useful indications on the invitations to tender (i.e. tender offers) likely to help in the financing of the participation of African teams in AMMA. It will be necessary to distinguish :

i.   funding intended to help the functioning of networks between partners of several African countries which could be used to help in the functionning of the African coordination structure of AMMA (typically AUPELF-UREF);

ii.   funding intended to finance well targeted research operations and limited scope (typically FIRMA);

iii.  funding allowing the mobilisation of a set of important means on a well coordinated research operation like that of AMMA
     (FSP of MAE in France, european programs,?)

These various means will have to be studied and used in a rational and coordinated manner.

The Niamey meeting reached part of its objectives as it made it possible to mobilize a broad community of African and European scientists around the setting-up of an integrated program for the study of the West African monsoon in its various components. A certain number of concrete actions, in the  domain of training as well as in those of observation and modeling were proposed. The forthcoming months will be devoted to the search for means that permit the concretization of these actions and to help function a true African coordination of the project.