SigesaaNorthern Ghana

Climate · Health · Livelihoods

The rain decides the year. We help families see it coming.

Sigesaa turns climate and satellite science into early warning and practical guidance for farming families in northern Ghana, so a late rain, a flood or a heat spell is something you prepare for, not something that happens to you.

Work with us See what we do

One rainy season. Everything depends on it.

Southern Ghana gets two rainy seasons. The north gets one, and when the rains start late or turn to flood, there is no second chance that year.

Dry season: water scarce, wells low Rains: planting depends on when they start Peak flood risk, including dam spill

Why northern Ghana

The part of Ghana the weather hits hardest, where people have the least to fall back on.

Almost everyone here farms, and there is only one season to do it. If the rains come late, planting is late. If they stop early, the crop dies before it is ready. If they turn to flood, the farm is washed away. Any of these means less food and less money for the whole year, with nothing set aside to fall back on. Women feel it first: they do much of the farming, they feed the household, and they have the least to fall back on.

54%of people in northern Ghana live below the poverty line.
6%of arable land is irrigated, the rest waits for rain.
1rainy season a year. No second chance if it fails.
Too much, then too little. The north's problem is not only flood. It is the same year swinging from washed-out farmland in August to dry wells and idle land by February. Both ends of that swing are climate-information problems, and both are what we work on.

What we do

Two things, done properly.

Focus area 01

Climate-and-health early warning

We use climate, weather and satellite data to give communities and health services warning of floods, extreme heat and the disease risks that follow, in time to act.

  • Flood and standing-water mapping from satellite
  • Heat and disease-risk alerts for health workers
  • Warnings written for the people who must act on them
Focus area 02

Climate services for farming and water security

We tell farming families when the rains are likely to come, what to do if they come late, and how to plan for the dry months.

  • Advice on when the rains will start and end
  • Seasonal and dry-season water outlooks
  • Practical support for women's farming and income groups

How we work

Science that ends in someone's hands.

We do not build our own networks. We work through the people communities already trust: women's groups, farmer groups, community health volunteers, clinics and district services. A forecast that never reaches a farmer or a health worker has done nothing. Our work is only finished when the information has been used.

Read the data

We do the science ourselves

Satellite and climate data, processed and validated by people who do this professionally, not repackaged from someone else's bulletin.

Translate it

Into a decision, not a chart

Plant now or wait. Move the animals. Watch for fever after the flood. Check on the elderly this week. Treat this water. Plain guidance, in the languages people use.

Deliver it

Through people communities trust

Farmer groups and agriculture extension for the planting side; clinics, community health volunteers and district health teams for the health side. The channels that already exist and already work.

Check it

Ask whether it helped

We go back to the farmers and the health workers and ask if the warning arrived in time, if it made sense, and what we got wrong. Then we fix it.

Who we are

Rooted in the north. Fluent in the science.

Plenty of organisations work in northern Ghana. Very few can read a satellite image, build a forecast and stand in the community it is meant to serve. Sigesaa was founded in Bolgatanga, in the Upper East, to be both.

"I grew up with this rainfall. I now study it for a living. Sigesaa exists to close the distance between what the data already shows and what a family in the north gets told in time to act on."

Dr Winifred Ayinpogbilla Atiah · Founder