Smart weather app helps Kenya’s herders brace for drought

Traditional Samburu tribeswomen gather their goats to be sell at Merille livestock market, some 411km north of Nairobi in Kenya's Marsabit county. Nomadic livestock herders in East Africa's drylands have endured climate variability for millennia, driving their relentless search for water and pasture in some of the world's most inhospitable terrain. — AFP

MERILLE, Kenya: Sitting under a low tree to escape the blazing Kenyan sun, Kaltuma Milkalkona and two young men hunch intently over the older woman’s smartphone – but they are not transfixed by the latest sports scores or a trending Internet meme.

The men instead are looking at a weather alert for their village in the country’s north, sent through an app that uses weather station data to help pastoralists prepare for drought.