Indigenous weather forecasting among Gujii pastoralists in southern Ethiopia: Towards monitoring drought

Abstract

Indigenous weather forecasting (IWF) is practised by various communities around the world. Access to meteorological weather forecasting is limited in eastern Africa’s pastoral regions. As a result, pastoralists frequently rely on indigenous weather forecasting indicators. This paper investigates the use of IWF in drought forecasting among Gujii pastoralists in southern Ethiopia. To collect data, household surveys, focus group discussions, and key informant interviews were used. Furthermore, meteorological data were used to determine the frequency of drought events in the area. A comparison was made between IWF and data from the Ethiopian National Metrological Service Agency to ensure consistency of the results of IWF and climatic data. For quantitative data analysis, descriptive statistics was used, while hermeneutic and narrative analyses were used for qualitative data analysis. Pastoralists have used a variety of weather forecasting indicators, such as reading livestock intestines, observing animal and insect behaviours, and interpreting the star and moon alignment. Both the indigenous drought event forecasting result and the drought history result from the meteorological agency indicate the presence of drought in the area. However, several internal and external factors are contributing to IWF’s gradual decline. Religious teachings, technology, and education were identified as external factors, while the growing generation gap was identified as an internal factor. Thus, to increase the accuracy of forecasting of weather events and improve pastoralist’s prediction capacity, the integration of this knowledge is highly appreciated.