Launching Husika in Lodwar: an early warning app for the Karamoja Cluster

The launch

ICPAC and partners launched the Husika mobile and web application in Lodwar, Kenya. The stated purpose was to improve how early warning messages — alerts about extreme weather and natural disasters — reach communities in remote or underserved areas across the IGAD Karamoja Cluster.

Choosing Lodwar for the launch is itself part of the argument. The Karamoja Cluster is the kind of place where a warning has the furthest to travel and the least infrastructure to travel on, and it is where the difference between a forecast that is published and a forecast that is received is easiest to see.

The problem it is built for

Early warning fails at the last mile far more often than it fails at the forecast. Regional and national centres can see a hazard forming days ahead; whether a household in a remote sub-county hears about it in time is a separate problem, with its own constraints — network coverage, handset capability, language, literacy and trust.

Husika exists to close that gap rather than to improve the forecast. It carries an advisory from the institution that issued it to the people who have to act on it, and carries their response back.

Where to get it

The application is available on the App Store and on Google Play, alongside the web app. Between them they cover the smartphone half of the audience; the messaging and voice channels Husika also runs on are what reach the other half.