By Antynet Ford

The Kenya Meteorological Service Authority (KMSA) has developed a new and enhanced weather service open to every farmer for free that is set to lift yields by up to 30 per cent for farmers who use it. 

Over the last one year plus, the service has developed a series of weather reports that it is now publishing free online continuously, spanning 5-day, 7-day, county, and specialist 10-day forecasts for farmers, as well as monthly and seasonal forecasts..

The 10-day farmer forecast, called the dekad is combining rain and temperature information with information on prevailing soil moisture.

Studies have shown that basing farming decisions on weather information can increase smallholders’ yields and incomes by at least as much as fertiliser and improved seeds. 

In Ethiopua, survey data from 3799 farmers found just 18 per cent of them accessing weather information, but these users achieved maize yields 27 per cent higher than farmers growing without weather forecasts, and wheat yields that were 17 per cent higher.

Across agriculture, weather conditions are critical to  increasing farmers’ return. For example, top dressing soil just ahead of heavy rain can trigger leaching and runoff, sharply reducing the benefits to crops. Conversely, some fertilisers need light rain to get to the roots of crops. The connection between soil care and weather, alone. Saw 70 per cent of farmers getting weather information changing the timing of their fertilise applications during a study in Senegal.

The efficacy of pest control similarly rests on the weather. For farmers using copper-based pesticides as an organic way to stop plant diseases, rain immediately washes away the chemical and all its protection, meaning it has to be resprayed. High or low temperatures, or rainfall, also drive up particular types of pests, like mildew or Persea mite, meaning farmers can move to protect crops ahead of risky weather.

However, while knowing what rainfall and temperatures lie ahead is a first step for farmers in getting higher returns, converting that into the best actions to take for crops and livestock requires deep agricultural knowledge and, often, help and support from agronomists and extension officers.

Kenya Met now offers some general agricultural tips in its dekad, with the forecast from 21st to 31st May 2026, for example, predicting rain in a few locations in the Highlands, southern Rift and Coast and advising farmers with livestock to take the opportunity to capture rain water for future use.

But newly published research by Mercy Corp AgriFin found that Kenyan farmers are hardly getting weather information from Kenya Met directly, but prefer information from the private sector, mainly through apps, where the forecasts are more aligned to farming actions.

This has prompted the weather service to open training for private services on how to interpret its forecasts to maximise their agricultural value.

The Met this week launched a new curriculum for this training, which will be rolled out from July 2026 at the Institute for Meteorological Training and Research (IMTR) to build “a culture of preparedness and resilience,” said Kenya Met Acting Director General, Edward Maina Muriuki.

The Director of the World Meteorological Organisation’s  Meteorological Training and Research Directorate (MTRD), Bernard Chanzu, emphasised in this that “strengthening climate services is not only about improving access to climate data, but also about building the leadership and institutional capacity needed to transform information into meaningful action.”

The training will “equip participants with practical competencies to interpret, apply, communicate, and integrate climate information into sector-specific decision-making,” he said.

According to Mercy Corps AgriFin Program Director Sieka Gatabaki, the curriculum can also then be scaled beyond Kenya to support climate resilience efforts across Africa.

“The private sector has been doing a lot to help smallholder farmers improve their productivity. With the partnership between the private and public partnership, I am sure we shall be able to disseminate weather updates which will be of even greater value with the various apps that are in place,” he said.

“For the first cohort, the focus is primarily on start-ups serving farmers, agribusinesses, and those in the climate space. They will be enabled to utilize Kenya Met information accurately and improve the way they disseminate the information to smallholder farmers.”

For farmers seeking insights directly, Kenya Met does not yet predict ahead the weather for each day in local areas, but this information is already provided by Google, based on a complex data model in a complex partnership that includes information provided by Kenya Met.

Google’s 10-day forecast has been found to be more accurate in its daily forecasts than national meteorological departments and is calculated on a 28km grid, meaning farmers can get the specific 10-day forecast for their village by searching for ‘weather village name’.

These can be ideal when choosing a planting or harvesting day.

But these slimline daily forecasts do not provide the rain maps, soil moisture, county forecasts or cumulative weather impact developed by Kenya Met, which provides its decad for farmers on the link: https://meteo.go.ke/our-products/dekadal-agrometeorological-bulletin/