Youth Harnessing Technology for Early Warning and Early Action

We are also on a show with us, a unique, new, innovative, Mohammed Bikadim Abdelahi from Somalia, Kuala Gala Maurice Owen from Uganda, and alongside her family and communicators, Ahmed Absi from Somalia, Hinyera Anthony Lacombek, Meckick from Uganda and Shambelli, Arlene from Ethiopia. Thank you for being here, and thank you for making time to share your insights and experiences. So we will start today's session, and I would like to start the session with a question on how young people can use technology to make climate information more accessible, inclusive, and actionable for early action and resilient agro-food systems. The best way we will start with Ezra Tiplimo, who will jumpstart us to a digital position or technology itself and how it works and how it's shaping the climate action in our region. To get more insight of this, we will have Ezra, who is the machine learning to scientists, GIS specialists, and as an analyst working at the intersection of climate security technology, vulnerability and disaster risk. His work applies machine learning, your special analysis, work-sensing, and climate data to strengthen early warning, climate services and early action across the greater and the more efficient eight-block. He contributes to that at Rebex solutions, the Translate Complex Collaborative Information, into actionable insights for decision makers and communities, and is passionate about harnessing technology and innovation to build a more climate resilient Africa. Ezra, Ezra can introduce yourself, Ezra can make a big difference, so we will watch the next speaker, who will be able to use digital advice or in-game. You know, this is going to help our in-house youth experts, who are, we can study with Mohamed Mohamed of the third year. I'm ready to thank his communication, strange enough. Hello, can you hear me? Hello, hello. Do you hear me now? Yeah, I can hear you. Yeah, I was muted by host, so I couldn't speak. Sorry. Greetings to all. I'm Ahmed Abzeer. From Somali, should I start? I don't know if... Ahmed, thank you. Ezra, you can speak after Ahmed. Ahmed is a climate journalist, and mental communication specialist, and a founding director of the Green Media Initiative, or Somalia-based platform, advancing climate action, environmental awareness, sustainable agriculture, climate resilience, early warning and communication, with over-h age experience in media and communication, and he works at the intersection of climate science, agriculture, media, youth engagement, and has trained and maintained generally the communicators across Somalia. I believe we are in the best hands to take us through climate communication. Welcome very much, Ahmed, and we are honored to have you in this session. Thank you very much. Actually, I cannot see the name. We've been speaking now. It's been really long. Yeah, yeah, you need it. I can see patients, my friend, and I'm also sending my hi to everyone. So thank you all, the backpack and the team here. It is a pleasure for me to join you today. Did you hear me well? Yes, you can hear you, Ahmed. That's great. Also, greetings to my fellow UC speakers, and I hope everyone who is joining to this important session, use collision space, where young people across the region can connect to share experiences and collaborate. I hope this platform will have a real impact across the region. Thank you all. I hope you already introduced me, but I actually wasn't hearing. I'm a GMI, a Somali climate journalist and founder of the Green Media Initiative, GMI. GMI, which you can check it now on your browser or Google Chrome, gmi.so. It's a Somali-based platform using journalism, digital storytelling, and community engagement to advance climate action, environmental awareness, and climate information, and everyone. By now, I hope you all search for it, gmi.so. For my experience at the GMI or Somali journalist, I always believe that climate storytelling is absolutely impactful and necessary for climate action, for combiting climate change and for healing all of them. Storytelling is all about taking information, sharing knowledge, education, educating people, and informing them, and helping communities understand the risks around them. It's all about that. And I think understanding the risks and should be the first to say before people can prepare or take any other action. One of the biggest challenges we do have, Somali-speaking media here in Somalia, is the much of the climate information, I mean, anthropocuses, produce it, and publish it in English. So, and also not only in English, but in Somalia, it's not in English-speaking country, by the way, to remain you that. It's also written in a very technical language. That may be easy for climate experts, or activists, or people who say about climate, or know about climate change, understand. But for a farmer, a best journalist, or someone just leaving in a valid, brown community, or area, or village in Somalia, it can be difficult to understand what that forecast is, and what that publication actually means for them, if they do not understand the language. So, GMI has been trying to localize, translate and simplify information from institutions, such as IKPAC, and exploring what it means for Somali communities, for Somali journalists. We then distribute it through our social media, and our network of more than 500 journalists and climate activists, and around 40 member radio stations across the country, who we do work closely with them, so they can add into their reporting and programs, without needing to mention us, or to credit us for that information. With El Nino 2026, for example, we started writing about it, as we hear the possibility of development of El Nino and the possibility of a very strong event, and we share it with journalists so they can take it further, to their own reporting and resharing it with their own communities. As a climate storyteller for me as a journalist, I believe that climate storytelling can become a powerful, when you take technical information and make it understandable, relevant, and useful, to your community, who need it, in our stage, actually, in El Nino where they can act or take actions. But I think that is also a climate, now we are living in a digital age where almost everyone can create or share information easily, sometimes without checking the source, really understanding the subject. So in my country, one of the challenges we see is that, misinformation around climate and an ill-warning can come from people who, symbolically, do not understand the warning. For example, some people say this is not going to happen and El Nino is not coming, it's just to take these warnings, I just project this, they are not real or something like that. So that can be very dangerous because people may receive a timely information, a timely warning from the institutions, from the media, from Equipak for example. But they may decide not to take it seriously, because of these people, so to combat these misinformation, this information, we need to strengthen the knowledge of journalism, these environmentalists and local communicators, so they can better understand climate information and then determine this information. I believe that this is one good way we can combat combat damage information and get a solution for it. Coming to make conclusion, I think Alexei already told me that I will have a five minute film. But I think now we are making a progress on both from the youth side and from the information gap. For example, we haven't seen young people. I mean, young youth who developed technologies and digital solutions for early warning communications. Using AI for example, in a very interesting way. Some of.