Highlights on the OPERA project consultation workshop

OPERA aims to strengthen ocean forecasting capabilities and cooperation in Sub-Saharan Africa and is the ocean-focused component of the European Union’s Support to African Regional Centres of Excellence for the Green Transition (ArcX) programme. At its heart, OPERA will establish and support three consortia of African partners – one dedicated to developing a regional and coastal ocean forecasting systems, and two focused on creating innovative solutions using ocean forecasting data. This will be complemented by capacity-sharing and community engagement activities, and the development of a dedicated data hub to share and provide access to project data and results across the continent. 

The first day of the workshop served to provide context for the OPERA project, with presentations from the OceanPrediction Decade Collaborative Centre and its Regional African team, IOCAfrica, the Ocean Decade Africa Taskforce and GOOS Africa. Mercator Ocean International, entrusted by the European Union to implement OPERA, presented the project’s main objectives, implementation plan, calls for participation and expected outcomes. This was followed by sessions to share and map current ocean forecasting efforts, applications, users, and partnerships in Africa. 

Over the following two days, participants engaged in interactive breakout sessions to identify key needs, priority solutions, and barriers related to ocean forecasting and its applications—culminating in a collaborative ranking of proposed solutions based on their potential impact and feasibility within the OPERA framework. The final day of the workshop focused on marine data infrastructures, featuring presentations from IOCAfrica on existing platforms, a showcase of the European Digital Twin of the Ocean, and the African Knowledge Platform; this session marked the first step in shaping the ocean forecasting component of the knowledge hub to be developed by OPERA, aligned with the Ocean Decade Africa Roadmap. The event concluded with a focused discussion on how to leverage the OceanPrediction DCC African Regional Team and its growing community to support OPERA’s goals. 

The meeting was organised by Mercator Ocean International, in collaboration with the South African Environmental Observation Network (SAEON), co-chair of the OceanPrediction Decade Collaborative Centre (DCC) African Regional Team. The meeting took place at the SAEON Offices in the Foretrust building of the Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment.  

A public information session on OPERA will be held online on 14 May at 10am (UTC+2). For more information and to register, click here: https://events.unoceanprediction.org/opera-information-session-  

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