Jean Pierre Nghonda is a researcher at the CCRL and a PhD student at the University of Maroua, Cameroon. He read physical geography, then specialised in climatology and tropical hydrology and had his skills enhanced at the International Institute for Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation (The Netherlands), thanks to a grant from the TIGER initiative under the Africa-European Space Agency’s programme. His current research is investigating the ways in which traditional knowledge systems can be used to aid understanding and management of shifts in the Sahel water cycle in Northern Cameroon near Lake Chad, and comparing this to modern scientific understanding of the processes at play.