# Towards Resolving Challenges Associated with Climate Change Modelling in Africa
## 5 Discussion
### Beyond the Science  
Two of the greatest challenges confronting the African scientific community are the long-standing brain drain and the lack of capacity development. Moving forward, local government and relevant stakeholder investment in education, research, and development need to be prioritized. This would provide the needed computational resources, skills, and infrastructure for researchers involved in climate change modelling and encourage the retainment of scientists in African institutions. For example, investing in improving the density and maintenance of the observational network in developing countries, especially sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries, would provide a valuable data source in years to come, resulting in more accurate observational historical climate data. This would ease and increase the emergence of impact studies, such as assessments of modelled heat stress, modelling of diseases, economic modelling, crop modelling, etc., in such a way as to account for small geographic units. The local availability of resources would assist in expanding research in climate change modeling in various sectors of human society, including infrastructural developments in the areas of ICT and the installation of advanced satellite technologies. These developments would provide direct access to quality real-time, high-resolution, climate-related data; thus, the spatial resolution of RCMs, for example, can be increased to yield data for finer geographic units or provide a greater understanding of physical processes. Accordingly, climate data are of paramount importance in capturing the specificities of the various topographically diverse geographic units. However, an increase in the spatial resolution of climate models is not to be achieved at the expense of superior simulations and should be accompanied by improved data-assimulation methods. Furthermore, global, regional, and local initiatives that provide a collaborative and transparent environment can foster research and innovation across the continent; for instance, SEACRI-FOG [83] has developed an integrative network for long-term and sustainable cooperation among African and European environmental research infrastructures. Additionally, the Climate Research for Alumni and Postdocs in Africa (climapAfrica) is a research initiative established by the German government and implemented by the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD) in cooperation with the climate competence centers Southern African Science Service Centre for Climate Change and Adaptive Land Management (SASSCAL) and West African Science Service Centre on Climate Change and Adapted Land Use (WASCAL), with the aim of fostering application-oriented research to tackle climate change in southern and western Africa. A priority for climapAfrica is the establishment of an African network for collaboration and information exchange amongst African researchers working on climate change and modelling-related projects. This has been achieved through various means. Capacity-building is a high priority; the initiative has hosted climate change-related online seminars with experts, training sessions, workshops, conferences, and exchange programs, with the aim of expanding the skillsets of African early-career scientists (ECSs), as related by the alumni and postdocs. The platform encourages independent collaboration within the network, fostering interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary research. Notably, most of these existing regional and local initiatives, i.e., SASSCAL, WASCAL, SEACRIFOG and climapAfrica, are mostly funded by non-African organizations; therefore, there is an urgent need for African governments to invest in local scientific talent themselves.