Experiences from Tanzania–Interview Experiment in Co-designing Future Local Climate Services

Climate change has global consequences, and is already being experienced, mainly by the most vulnerable groups of people in the Global South. Face-to-face on site interviews by two groups with an interpreter showed that farming activities in Tambuu Village, Morogoro Region, Tanzania are being complicated by additional uncertainties in weather patterns, climate change and changes in climate variability. To design future hybrid mobile climate services, we explored local information demands and current mobile usage patterns. The qualitative interview content analysis pinpointed a number of basic information demands, like seasonal climate outlooks and warnings for droughts or floods. The interviews revealed three interesting outliers. First, exceptionally large growing areas of the farm meant in practice need for information to support the maintenance for mechanized farming tools. Second, with a single exception, farmers showed a reluctant pattern to use services of agricultural extension officers. As third outlier, we found - among predominantly used ordinary button- the rising use of smartphones for farming activities. Our abductive analysis of the last outlier in Tambuu indicated the demand to take preparatory steps to design and develop integrated future hybrid climate services together with local farmers.