The TEMBO Africa consortium is a multi-partner EU-funded project focused on transformative, low-cost environmental monitoring across Africa, held its M26 General Assembly in Nairobi over five days in March 2025, bringing together partners from TU Delft, TAHMO, AgroApps, Rainbow Sensing, KMD, UNZA, UDS, GAIP, GReD, MicroStep, SEBA, and HCP International, among others.
The first two days were an internal deep-dive. Nick van de Giesen (TU Delft) opened with a refresher on the project’s architecture: seven sensor types (covering atmosphere, land surface, and open water), five data products (including rainfall maps, soil moisture, and floodplain mapping), and three services; Flood Early Warning Systems (FEWS), Reservoir Management, and Agriculture Insurance.
Much of the time was spent in working groups mapping data flows between sensors and services, then drilling into business planning. Groups assessed costs, benefits, intellectual property arrangements, and key performance indicators for each service area. For reservoir management in particular, GNSS-based dam stability and water level monitoring emerged as the most promising near-term opportunities high impact, relatively low effort — while bathymetry and discharge monitoring were flagged as strategically important but more resource-intensive.
Day 2 also featured a session on the TEMBO Africa website, which had recently been updated. The group identified a long list of improvements: adding sensor and product pages, including agriculture insurance in the services section, clarifying service descriptions that had been lifted too directly from the grant agreement, adding a ‘nodes’ tab, and consolidating what turned out to be two separate TEMBO LinkedIn accounts.
On the GEOSS front, Mark Noort (HCP) reported that TEMBO’s activities don’t map neatly onto GEO’s new post-2025 work programme structure. The consortium has applied to the GEO Secretariat for guidance on which initiatives to align with, and is actively participating in EuroGEO and AfriGEO, with 2026 earmarked as a key year to present results.
Day 3 — Local Stakeholder Workshop
Wednesday’s workshop opened up to a broader audience, including representatives from KenGen, ACRE Africa, the Kenya Space Agency, NADMO, RCMRD, Lato Milk, KBC, Citizen TV, and several media outlets.
The workshop theme was Development of Climate and Business Models for Early Warning Services. Working groups tackled the same three service areas with fresh eyes from external stakeholders. Key takeaways included the importance of farmer education around agricultural insurance, the need for better collaboration between the Kenya Space Agency and insurance providers, and the recognition that FEWS sustainability beyond the project’s end must be planned for now. A follow-up meeting with ACRE Africa was flagged as a priority next step.
A particularly productive bilateral session took place with KenGen, Kenya’s national power utility. The SEBA team presented the full suite of reservoir management solutions — bathymetry, image-based discharge monitoring, and GNSS water level monitoring. KenGen expressed the most enthusiasm for the discharge monitoring station, pointing to gaps in their understanding of tributary inflows between cascading dams as a key pain point. SEBA committed to providing cost estimates and technical specs, and KenGen agreed to take the proposal to management.
Days 4 & 5 — Masinga Dam Excursion and Co-creation Workshop
The final two days took the group out of Nairobi for a site visit and workshop at Masinga Dam, the largest of Kenya’s seven Tana River dams and a critical node in the country’s hydropower infrastructure. Dam managers gave a presentation on operations, successes, and challenges, followed by a tour of the facility.
Friday’s co-creation workshop focused on designing requirements for a Reservoir Information Management System, with Hessel Winsemius (Rainbow Sensing) leading the session alongside dam managers. The goal was to co-design what an automation-ready system might look like based on real operational needs a grounded, practical exercise that rounded off a productive week.
