Regional Team: African Seas

Building local, thinking global

A regional team for Africa

The African Seas Regional Team is the Oceanprediction DCC regional node for the mentioned region. The Regional Teams are the organizational backbone of OceanPrediction DCC community, and they are formed by individuals and organizations with very diverse background and interests: scientists and users, experts and interested persons, private and public sector, etc...

The regional team will promote Operational Ocean Forecasting Services as a key tool for Blue Economy and ocean policy. It is also supporting the coordination and the cooperation of ocean forecasting-related Decade actions in the area, and it is advocating for the regional implementation of Best Practices, Standards and Tools derived from OceanPrediction technical activity. The Regional Team is active in the design and organization of regional events for capacity building, ocean literacy and other purposes, such as courses, workshops, hackathons, etc.

Working together with the regional teams in other regions, it will form a worldwide network to achieve all the above-mentioned objectives, ensuring that regional singularities are considered during the process.

Leading the Team

Chair

Professor Kouadio Affian has been Vice-President of the University Felix Houphouet-Boigny (Côte d’Ivoire) in charge of training and research since 2012. Before that, he was Director of the Remote Sensing Center for Applied Research as well as Director of postgraduate African school of Remote Sensing (1999-2010) at the University of Cocody, before becoming Dean of the school of Earth Sciences (2010-2012). Prof. Affian has served on numerous national bodies and committees; at international level, he has regularly taken part in UNESCO and IOC/UNESCO bodies since 2005 – most recently, he was named Chair of IOCAFRICA in 2021. He has more than 80 publications to his credit, focusing among others on the development of integrated coastal zone management, coastal erosion, sea surface temperature, sea color, bathymetry and environment studies based on remote sensing and GIS. Prof. Affian has degrees in marine biology and remote sensing applied to oceanography.

Leading the Team

Co-chairs

Karim Hilmi

Head of the Oceanography Department and Research Director, National Institute of Fisheries Research

Siva Reddy

Researcher, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology Jeddah, Saudi Arabia

Jennifer Veitch

Numerical Modeller, South African Environmental Observation Network

Providing a vision of the different African regions

Regional leaders

Pr. Kouadio Affian

(Ivory Coast - Chair of IOC Africa) for the Gulf of Guinea LME

Pr. Amr Hammouda

(Egypt -President of NIOF) for the Mediterranean Sea Region

Dr. Karim Hilmi

(Morocco- Vice Chair of IOC/UNESCO) as a focal point for the Canary Current Large Marine Ecosystem

Pr. Antonio Mubango Hoguane

(Mozambique- Director General of the Institute of Oceanography) for the Eastern Part of Africa

Dr. Sivareddy Sanikommu

(King Abdullah University of Science and Technology - Red Sea Modeling and Prediction Group) for the Red Sea

Dr. Jennifer Veitch

(South Africa- SAEON) for Benguela LME & Agulhas current

Organizing the activities and ensuring the connection between the different components of OceanPrediction DCC

Steering team

Tamaryn Morris

Ocean Observing | Senior Marine Scientist, South African Weather Service

Fialho Nehama

Ocean Observing | Lecturer, Eduardo Mondlane University, Mozambique

Ibrahim Hoteit

Ocean forecasting: physics | Professor of Earth Sciences and Engineering, Applied Mathematics & Computer Science, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Saudi Arabia