Local Knowledge and Weather Forecasting Practices in Transition – DROP App Fieldwork in Ghana
By Johanna Weigel
March 24, 2026
In March 2026, I accompanied the SAFE4ALL project team to Ghana as part of my thesis research, conducted in collaboration with the DROP App. The goal was to better understand how local knowledge practices for weather forecasting have changed in communities in recent years, how the DROP App fits into these practices, and how community dynamics, roles, and decision-making processes may have shifted.
The Living Lab Workshop
Before heading into the field, I facilitated a participatory workshop at the University for Development Studies in Tamale, integrated into a one-day SAFE4ALL stakeholder engagement program. Six farmers who had previously participated in SAFE4ALL activities joined for a two-hour session.
The workshop moved between individual reflection and group discussion. It opened with a mapping activity I called the Forecasting Circle: each participant individually mapped everyone they talk to about the weather in their daily life, such as family members, neighbours, elders, or rainmakers, placing people closer or farther away depending on how often they interact and noting what kind of information they exchange. This activity aimed to surface community dynamics, relationships, roles, and changes in these forecasting networks.
The exercise made visible how weather information travels in these communities, the density and intensity of these exchanges, where forecast knowledge comes from, how it moves through households, across and beyond farming communities, and along social relationships shaped by age, gender, and role. Notably, because not everyone has access to forecast tools, information is actively shared: those without access ask others for it. Weather knowledge also circulates well beyond farming, as one participant put it:
“I give them information about the DROP App. I share it with farmers, traders, shea pickers, and teachers, so that they will know how to plan their time.”
Its uses also extend beyond agriculture:
“It is not only for farming activities, but also for travelling. If someone wants to travel, people don’t want to get sick, so they normally ask about weather information. So it is not only about the farming aspect.”
The second and main activity was a card game I developed for the session. Participants took turns drawing cards with statements, dilemmas, or questions, responding individually before discussing them as a group. One category presented real tension scenarios, for instance, situations where the DROP App’s scientific forecast and a local sign pointed in opposite directions, to explore how participants would handle such a situation. One farmer explained:
“If there is a difference, you need to sit down and do more research, so that you can know where the discrepancy is coming from.”
A third set of cards explored potential new features for the DROP App. One in particular sparked strong interest: the possibility of selecting specific local indicators, such as frogs, ants, or ducks, when submitting a local forecast. I had prepared a visual mock-up showing what this might look like in the app. One farmer immediately opened the DROP App on his phone mid-session, wanting to see where this feature would appear.
Into the Communities: Yepalsi and Nakpanzoo
The following day, we visited two communities: Yepalsi in the morning and Nakpanzoo in the afternoon. In each location, I conducted narrative interviews, individually or in pairs, with a diverse range of participants: young farmers, experienced middle-aged farmers, women, older community members, and, in one case, a rainmaker. The interviews were conducted in Dagbani with translation support and lasted between 30 and 45 minutes each.
One of the most consistent themes across every single interview was the declining reliability of local forecast indicators. Without exception, every participant described the same experience: the signs are still there, but they no longer work the way they used to.
“Accuracy has changed over the past few years. For example, the sheep and the mosquito signs are not reliable anymore. The reason is the change in rainfall amounts; the rains have become less. So, sort of, due to climate change.”
“The signs themselves haven’t changed, but their accuracy has reduced. Even signs which usually indicated very heavy rainfall – now you can see the clouds without it actually raining. That is happening more often now.”
Several participants went further, anticipating that dependence on local knowledge will decline sharply in the future:
“Looking at how temperatures have become higher and how the seasons have changed, it is affecting the accuracy of the traditional knowledge forecast. In the coming years, it is going to be of no use, or maybe of lesser impact.”
This outlook was shared by the community rainmaker:
“Based on my experience, in the coming years, the scientific forecast is going to overtake their local tradition because of the changes in the weather and climate.”
Surprisingly, when asked how he feels about this, he said:
“I don’t have a problem with it, because even I myself sometimes benefit from the scientific forecast.”
He also highlighted the value of the DROP App’s approach of integrating both local and scientific forecasts:
“But having an application like that, where those who are using the local system can also input it, is something that will help.”
That said, I found a gap between community members actually inputting local forecasts into the app and mainly using it to retrieve the scientific forecast. This may largely be because the people who use DROP and the people with deep local forecasting knowledge are not always the same. Local knowledge is practised broadly, but experience with it varies considerably, and those with the most knowledge are often the least tech-savvy:
“The rainmaker and some adults, the older ones, are more experienced. I think with the traditional system, the elderly people, because of the number of years of experience, most of them have more knowledge when it comes to the traditional forecast.”
“They don’t input the local forecast because they are not familiar with the phone and are not tech-savvy due to their lack of education.”
The mock-up of the indicator selection feature, shown again during the community interviews, generated the same enthusiasm as in the workshop. Farmers described several reasons why they found it valuable. For example, it makes the app more visual and easier to navigate for non-literate users:
“Adding those symbols is going to help. The reason is that some people in the community are illiterate. Some people will require symbols in the app to be able to understand how some of the features work.”
It also serves as a reference point that makes the source of a forecast traceable:
“If it is possible to select specific indicators, I would like it. The reason is that those signs will serve as a reference for me to know where their forecasting is coming from, which particular indicator it is based on.”
And it creates opportunities to assess reliability over time and learn from one another:
“If it is done in that format, people will be able to share this information and knowledge among themselves. It is kind of like learning from each other. It is something that will help.”
The DROP App itself was spoken of with trust and appreciation by those who had used it:
“I mostly use the DROP App because I trust this one. But the other app, it can give information, but it won’t work. Even when the climate is changing, the DROP App knows there is no rain again.”
Access, however, remains a barrier. Illiteracy and limited English pose challenges, as does smartphone ownership, especially among women. In one community, the device provided to the women’s group when DROP was first introduced, unfortunately, broke and is no longer usable:
“We were using it, but at some point, it got spoiled and couldn’t be repaired. It was very helpful to us, but now we can’t use it anymore to receive information.”
Outcome
Analysis of the full interviews, workshop outputs, and visual materials is ongoing. What the fieldwork has surfaced, however, is a picture more complicated than a simple story of technology adoption. Local forecasting knowledge is genuinely valued, actively used, and embedded in daily life, but it is also under pressure. The DROP App exists alongside it in a relationship that participants themselves are still figuring out. It is a new source of weather information that is deeply appreciated, as one workshop participant put it:
“Because as a farmer, rain is everything to us. So when the season comes, every farmer is expecting to hear information about that. So any app, any DROP App you use that can indicate forecasting information – when you are gathered at a meeting like this and discussing that issue with farmer groups, everybody is listening.”