Mr ABANI AHMED Ali, (58 years old) is from Niger Republic and worked with the African Centre of Meteorological Applications for Development (ACMAD) in Niamey - Niger as the Chief of Computing and Telecommunications Department (International Professional recruitment position) from July 2007 to June 2015. He has also been IT and Database Management Specialist on an African Development Bank –AfDB funded project at ACMAD; called ISACIP. He is acting Head of IT Department up to date, working on IT related projects of ACMAD.
He performed recently, the position of Telecommunication Expert of the Regional Advanced Retransmission Service RARS on Satellite and Weather Information for Disaster Resilience in Africa -SAWIDRA project (from July 2017 to September 30th 2020); which led to the improvement of high resolution low orbit satellite data reception over Africa with four established ground stations in Gabon, Kenya, South-Africa and Niger. He has coordinated the four RARS hosting sites activities since installation. Currently he is SEWA project RARS network coordinator.
Other missions include, the Administration of Computing Systems, management of the Data Reception, Processing and Dissemination Systems (Météosat Second Generation Station -MSG; PUMA Reception and Synergie Systems, MEssage IRRIgator –MessirCOM system and other computing facilities around the Specialised ACMAD’s data monitoring system called AMEDIS which is an acronym for “African Meteorological and Environmental Data Dissemination System”. He deployed the first version of RAINWATCH, at ACMAD which has been used to support integrated approach projects such as Kandadji dam initiative in Niger. He also coordinated the acquisition, installation and management of the High, Performance Computing system –HPC, and PUMA2025/ClimSA station at ACMAD. He has successfully installed the first prototype of the Environmental Climate Station(C-Station), developed and integrated by the Joint Research Centre of the European Union (JRC) for the benefit of WMO Regional Climate Centers -RCCs.
He was previously the head of Technical Support Unit and Rural Communications Systems Specialist at ACMAD, from 2001-2007.
He contributed to many regional trainings and organisation of international meetings, IT workshops and consultancy activities on rural communication systems and Worldspace technology to African Meteorologists trough ACMAD‘s RAdio and InterNET (RANET) project for meteorological and environmental data dissemination to rural communities in local languages. He is the coordinator of RANET activities at ACMAD from 2000 to January 2010, which consequences led to development of the famous Rural Radio Network (RURANET) in Niger Republic having more than 120 installed community radios. Similar experiences have been developed in other African regions in line with that project: (Senegal Chad, Mali, Burkina Faso, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Mozambique etc).
With his Last position at ACMAD, M ABANI Ahmed Ali, has been implicated in senior management role and responsibilities for about 18 years, (acting Director General of ACMAD several times during his absence, member of ACMAD‘s senior management Team, vice president of acquisition of goods and services committee, Member of the WMO-DBNet and Vice Chair-RAIDEG working groups, Community Satellite Processing Packages –CSPP user’s group etc). He also conducted many international missions and consultancies on behalf of the ACMAD Centre.