This week, in Delft, the Netherlands, the twelve partners of the TEMBO Africa consortium sat down together for what was, on paper, just another General Assembly. In practice, it was something more significant: the project’s Month 44 meeting, held with roughly four months left before formal closure, marked the moment TEMBO Africa turned decisively from building things that work in a few countries to scaling them to other parts in Africa and Europe.
For four years, the consortium has pursued a single, ambitious goal, to develop cost-effective, innovative environmental sensor networks across Sub-Saharan Africa, and to build climate services on top of the data those sensors generate, with a long-term ambition that those services could one day help sustain the observation infrastructure itself through viable business models. In Delft, the partners took stock of four years of work and asked a harder question: how does all of this become something that lasts beyond the project?
TEMBO Africa was never the work of a single organisation. It was built like a structure assembled from many interlocking pieces; twelve partners, each contributing a distinct block, from Dutch and German engineering teams to Kenyan, Ghanaian and Zambian research and meteorological institutions. HCP, Rainbow Sensing and TU Delft in the Netherlands; SEBA in Germany; AgroApps in Greece; MicroStep in Slovakia; GReD in Italy, working alongside TAHMO and the Kenya Meteorological Service Authority in Kenya, the University for Development Studies and GIA in Ghana, and the University of Zambia. Twelve blocks, one ecosystem.
What those blocks built, over four years, is a set of seven observation technologies designed for African conditions and budgets: commercial microwave links that turn existing telecom infrastructure into a rainfall sensor network; X-band radar for spatial rainfall estimates; intervalometers that detect and typify rainfall events; neutron counters for large-scale soil moisture monitoring; low-cost GPS/GNSS receivers repurposed for mapping and beyond; camera-based systems that measure river discharge; and UAVs and fish-finders that map riverbeds and reservoirs.
On their own, sensors only measure. TEMBO Africa’s second layer of blocks turns those measurements into something usable: five data products — rainfall maps, soil moisture maps, open water data, river discharge information and floodplain mapping and bathymetry. And on top of those products sits the layer that matters most to the people TEMBO Africa was built for: three services. A flood early warning system that gives communities more time to prepare before water levels rise. A dam reservoir management service that helps hydropower and other dam operators plan their water use more safely and efficiently. And a germination insurance product that uses rainfall data to protect farmers when rains fail after sowing, and to support timely replanting.
The logic that runs through the whole project is simple, and the consortium returned to it again and again in Delft: sensors feed data products, data products power services, and clients select the blocks they need. It is a structure designed for flexibility, not every partner, and not every end user, needs every block, but the blocks are built to connect.
What made the Delft meeting different from previous General Assemblies is that this logic is no longer theoretical. Several of TEMBO Africa’s pilots have moved from concept to functioning reality. At the Bui dam in Ghana, a reservoir management system is now operational and largely performing as intended. In Zambia, a dashboard has been developed for the Lunsemfwa hydropower scheme, though its final deployment now depends on changes within the operating company.
At KenGen in Kenya, a full site assessment has been completed, and the next step is prioritising installations. None of these are finished stories, the consortium was careful in Delft not to present unfinished work as done, but together they show a project whose technologies are being tested against the realities of operating dams and reservoirs, not just research plots
That real-world testing has, in turn, generated something the consortium has been waiting four years to see: early interest from potential end users. Partners reported emerging business leads and genuine curiosity from organisations that could use TEMBO Africa’s low-cost monitoring technologies. The consortium was careful to frame this accurately, not as commercial success, but as early market interest and emerging business opportunities that point toward what viable business models for African environmental monitoring could look like. Delft’s discussions on implementing business models, exploitation roadmaps and upcoming funding calls were about turning that interest into something durable.
Turning interest into durability is, in many ways, the entire agenda for TEMBO Africa’s final four months. There is still important technical work to finish: sensor operationalisation, final checks of the operational satellite rainfall workflow, controlled experiments involving GNSS ZTD and TAHMO stations, and continued work with the new radar at the KALRO Tea Training Institute in Kericho, Kenya. Each of these matters because it moves a technology from something that works in a project setting to something that works reliably enough for someone else to depend on.
Reliability is also the foundation for TEMBO Africa’s legacy plans. The consortium is positioning its reusable services, a shared backend supporting operator-specific dashboards for Bui, Lunsemfwa and, in future, KenGen, to outlive the project itself. Reservoir models, bathymetry baselines and integrated monitoring workflows are being documented as lasting outputs for dam operators. Practical operator training and documented procedures are building local capacity, with African counterparts already involved in shaping future studies. And the KenGen pilot is being explored as a template for replication, SCADA integration and a funded maintenance model that could keep the system running long after TEMBO Africa’s funding ends.
Part of that long-term thinking runs through TEMBO Africa’s relationship with the Group on Earth Observations, or GEO, which promotes the use and sharing of Earth observation information, including in-situ data. TEMBO Africa will contribute to GEO’s in-situ activities and data-management compliance, including relevant GEO requirements and OPIDoR processes. The value of that connection is less about the label and more about what it enables: keeping open, free in-situ data for weather, water, agriculture and climate on Africa’s agenda; better identifying and advocating for African observation needs; opening doors to new funding and cooperation; strengthening the TEMBO Africa brand; and maintaining TEMBO as a platform where new partners and customers can still join the story after the project ends.
None of this happens without telling people about it, which is why communication, dissemination and exploitation featured so prominently in Delft. TEMBO Africa’s communication work, social media, partner channels, newsletters, infographics, flyers, banners, posters and digital storytelling, has built visibility over four years, and September 2026 brought the project’s first two media placements in print and digital outlets. Two channels remain largely untapped: television and podcasts. Partners agreed that closing that gap, alongside sharpening messages for TEMBO Africa’s specific audiences and strengthening local-language communication in Ghana, will be a priority for the months ahead.
Perhaps the most understated outcome of the Delft meeting was the meeting itself. Bringing twelve partners together in one room, after years of remote collaboration punctuated by occasional travel, visibly sharpened cross-work-package problem solving, knowledge exchange and alignment on what the final four months need to deliver. It was a reminder that TEMBO Africa is not simply a collection of sensors and software. It is a collaborative ecosystem connecting European technology developers, African research institutions, meteorological organisations, universities and end users — and ecosystems, like Lego structures, hold together best when the people who built them keep meeting to check the joints.
As the consortium heads into its final four months, the agenda can be summarised in five words: operationalise, demonstrate, exploit, communicate, sustain. Operationalise the remaining technical work. Demonstrate the practical value of the pilots that are furthest along. Exploit the business models and roadmaps the consortium has been developing. Communicate the achievements in a language that reaches beyond specialists. And sustain the technologies, partnerships and data streams TEMBO Africa has built, so they continue to serve African communities long after the project formally closes.
The project may be approaching its final chapter, but the observations, services, partnerships and opportunities created through TEMBO Africa are intended to continue writing the story. Every raindrop measured by a TEMBO Africa sensor has the potential to become a warning delivered in time, a turbine kept safely turning, or a harvest given a second chance after a failed rain. That is what innovation for good looks like; not a single dramatic breakthrough, but four years of building the right blocks, and four final months spent connecting them to the people, markets and institutions that can carry them forward.
