تحت الياسمينة
This month’s newsletter was written by two community members. Amal Nammouchi, originally from Tunisia 🇹🇳, is a co-founder of AfriClimate AI, a Pan-African non-profit using AI to tackle climate challenges across Africa. She is a PhD candidate affiliated with SOLVE and Karlstad University, Sweden, and is a long time organiser for the Deep Learning Indaba, including her role as the Chair of the Applications and Selection Committee for the 2024 Deep Learning Indaba. From Algeria 🇩🇿, Sabrina Amrouche relocated to Switzerland to pursue a PhD in physics and AI CERN. She has moved to industry after her PhD and is now leading the data science department at ZYTLYN. She is a co-founder of AfriClimate AI and leads the AfriNet project.
🇹🇳 Growing up in Tunisia, the northernmost African city, I spent countless hours beneath Jasmine trees, enjoying the cold breeze of “El 9ayla”, the Tunisian term for midday hot hours, and the soft echoes of “Ta7t el Yassmina - Under the Jasmine Tree” song filled my soul. I grew up in El Alia, a quiet farming town, where summer days meant joining neighbors to pick tout and hendi fruits, playing under the wide open sky, climbing trees with sticky fingers, and resting under fig branches while the land was filled with life. Those rhythms once felt eternal. But with each passing year, they began to shift. What we once called seasons started losing their meaning: extreme heat waves hitting more often, more harshly reaching 50°C temperature in my little coastal town, carrying a different weight, one of risk, even death for some, rain arriving too late or not at all, fruit ripening too early, the soil too dry.
🇩🇿 It’s been ten years since I left Algeria. Before that, the idea of water consistently coming out of a tap was foreign. The very first time I immersed myself in a bath tub was when I was 27. The notion would be completely outrageous back home. People get regularly shamed for washing their cars… Water means food, peace, or chaos. More than 85% of my country’s agricultural land depends on rain. Rain makes and breaks farmers and millions of livelihoods. On dry spring days, there would be massive prayers (“Salat el istiskaa” in Arabic) organised to humbly plead for rain. It is the last resort for people when they, helplessly, see their crops die. Most farmers in my country sold their land and moved to the city. My parents came from a family of farmers. When their land completely dried, a decade ago, I remember my mother, shovel in hand, filling up large bags of the old tired soil that once fed her. That soil travelled hundreds kilometres and now sits in a balcony nourishing colourful roses. And so, there was once a Jasmine tree that scented my early childhood memories. I get to see what remains of it on my mother’s balcony every time I visit.
🇹🇳 🇩🇿 Climate change has never been a scientific, abstract concept. For many of us, it arrived slowly, quietly—like a neighbour who overstayed their welcome, reshaping the contours of daily life without asking. It revealed itself in the wells running dry, in the timing of harvests going unpredictable, in the exhaustion on the faces of farmers who can no longer rely on the sky. And yet, despite the heaviness, we have found something else: connection. Through communities such as the Deep Learning Indaba and AfriClimate AI, we’ve learned that while the signs of crisis may differ across our landscapes, our stories echo each other. From Cape Town to Cape Angela, From El Alia to Milliana, we are united by the urgency to protect what we love, to unite in pushing the frontiers of climate research, adapt and mitigate together.
AfriClimate AI was born from this shared vision. A grassroots community of AI and Climate researchers, professionals, policy makers and changemakers, dedicated to harnessing the power of AI for a sustainable and climate-resilient Africa. Our work is deeply rooted in Wangari Maathai’s powerful assertion: “You cannot protect the environment unless you empower people, you inform them, and you help them understand that these resources are their own, that they must protect them.” Guided by this vision, we have set ambitious goals to tackle the pressing challenges at the intersection of climate science and AI across the continent. From capacity building through our workshops and seminars, to knowledge sharing through AfriWiki, to concrete on-the-ground impact with AfriNet—where we deploy community weather stations—and research initiatives such as our weather benchmarking project, we strive to bridge gaps and cultivate resilience.
Whatever your vision, there is a place for you to plant a seed, to empower, to volunteer, and to grow alongside us. We invite you to join in reimagining and rebuilding a future where communities thrive in harmony with their environment.
