One of the core elements of the Sustainable Africa Intiative is local collaboration and outreach through the Climate Risk Research Challenge. The Climate Risk Research Challenge offers three winning teams a portion of $10,000 USD in prize money. The challenge is open to a wide range of participants, including African university climate scientists, and students in Agriculture and Environmental Studies programs.
Participants will be provided with the necessary resources and training to gain a better understanding of the impacts of climate change and to develop strategies to mitigate potential climate-related risks, including Policy, Economic, Social and Physical Climate, under different IPCC transition scenarios.
Challenge Participants Start Here
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The goal of the Challenge is to create a set of scientifically-based climate-risk models and long-term adaptation plans, which will be developed by university students, data scientists, sustainability advocates, and environmental scientists in collaboration with consortium members of the Sustainable Africa Initiative (SAI).
SAI aims to establish a grassroots movement that is led by local community stakeholders, where Africans own, improve, develop, and expand a growing repository of models, data, analytical capabilities and training materials.
With the support of OS-Climate members and volunteers such as Amazon and All Fed, Challenge participants receive training, support, data, and mentorship to analyze the impacts of climate change.
The first Challenge is focused on Nigeria's agriculture sector and specific crops.
Nigeria's population is 213.4 million and is expected to reach 400 million by 2050. As the 7th largest exporter of oil in the world, Nigeria’s economy relies heavily on the export of oil and petroleum products. These exports drive over $38B (USD) in annual revenue and account for two-thirds of Nigeria’s government spending on key imports such as grains to feed their citizens. The Sustainable Africa Initiative grapples with a fundamental question: How can Nigeria transition into a low carbon economy, enhance the quality of life for its growing population, and guarantee food security for the region? We believe that the solution lies in the data, but uncovering the answer demands a global cooperative approach – and this constitutes THE CHALLENGE.
The Challenge aims to measure the food security risk to the population in the region and includes submissions of potential mitigation strategies.
The initiative aims to encourage collaboration, enhance awareness of the potential climate-related risks, and create an open-source platform offering Africans access to physical and transition risk data, cloud-based infrastructure resources, analytical tools, and self-service training.
This platform will enable the development of mitigation and adaptation strategies that reduce the impact of physical climate change and a shift towards a low-carbon world.
Do you want to Make A Difference? Click Here to volunteer. We need software developers, climate scientists, data scientists, project managers, community managers, data engineers, and others to help.
Are you a Nigerian citizen? Register Here To Participate