Weizmann Institute opens Africa's first mobile climate laboratory in Kenya

Israel's Weizmann Institute of Science has put a mobile climate laboratory into operation in Kenya, described by its partners as the first facility of its kind on the African continent. The lab was presented to officials and the press at the end of April 2026 and reported in early May. It sits at the Kapiti research ranch of the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) in Machakos County, a 32,000-acre site that has been used for more than a decade to study livestock and rangelands.

The laboratory carries more than 30 scientific instruments. Its sensors reach deep into the soil and up a mast to 28 metres above ground, recording how carbon dioxide, water and energy move between the land and the atmosphere, along with solar radiation and changes in vegetation. The aim is to show how changes in land use, such as grazing or clearing, alter those cycles in a region where almost no such ground measurements exist.

The campaign is led by Prof. Dan Yakir, Dr. Eyal Rotenberg and Dr. Dan Elhanati of Weizmann's Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, together with their students and postdoctoral researchers. The plan is to keep the lab at Kapiti for about three years and then move it to sites near Mount Kenya and in forest areas, before taking it on to Tanzania, South Africa and other countries.

Israel's ambassador to Kenya, Gideon Behar, said the project grew out of a proposal Yakir made some eight years earlier. ILRI's director general, Appolinaire Djikeng, said the data would help close a shortage that limits climate planning across Africa. The World Meteorological Organization has reported that 2024 was among the warmest years on record for the continent.