By Wallace Mawire

Two automatic weather stations have been installed at some of Zimbabwe’s rural communities to enable farmers to receive reliable and timely weather and climate information for agriculture planning.

The stations were installed at Agriculture Extension Services (Agritex) offices at Neshuro growth point in Masvingo province and in Rushinga.

The Chinese government, in order to enhance the link between weather and agriculture and to improve the partnership between the meteorological services department and the ministry of Agriculture in Zimbabwe, launched the initiative.

In addition to the radios earlier distributed, the farmers have received about $2 million equipment support initiative from the Chinese government to improve weather and climate information dissemination. At least 150 automatic weather stations have been deployed throughout the country to benefit farmers.

In sum, the support programme facilitated under the China-Africa initiative has seen Zimbabwe’s meteorological department receiving state of the art equipment such as automatic weather stations and a meteorological early warning radio system mainly to benefit the agriculture sector.
Agriculture is the mainstay of Zimbabwe’s economy and 70 percent of the population lives in the rural areas and are farmers.