Representatives from Southern African Development Community (SADC) countries gathered in Maseru on Thursday for the Eleventh Southern Africa Regional Climate Outlook Forum (SARCOF-11).

The SARCOF – 11 forum, which has been organised by Drought Monitoring Centre (DMC)- Botswana, aims to bring together climate experts to review the 2006/2007 rainfall season.

Speaking in an interview with LENA, the Coordinator of DMC, Mr. Bred Garanganga, said the objectives of the two day meeting, which started on Thursday is to come up with a regional seasonal out mark for October 2007-March 2008.

He however said, Southern African countries including Lesotho are faced with a severe drought, adding that this is as a result of poor rainfalls from January this year.

On the other, Climate Expert from Angola said SADC experts in issues of climate change are faced with a major challenge of disseminating weather forecast issues to the people, as they are complex.

Mr. Lewis Constantino explained that issues of climate change are complex and ordinary people fail to understand what they mean, urging experts to simplify difficult issue for the understanding of the public.

DMC is an organisation mandated to disseminate weather forecast information in Botswana.

Participants at the meeting are representatives from all SADC countries.

Source: LENA 13/09/2007