Meteorological satellites provide essential data for meteorology as well as for many other disciplines worldwide. Many National Meteorological Services (NMSs) in Africa have installed equipments for the reception of meteorological data in the last two decades. In this paper a few NMSs, which are in Algeria, Ethiopia, Gambia, Kenya and Namibia, and some intergovernmental organizations, ACMAD (Niger), AGRHYMET (Niger) and DMC(Kenya & Zimbabwe), are considered. They have recognized the need and importance of satellite data to process, manage and disseminate information related to food security, desertification, crop protection, desert locust control..., etc.. The data are also used for early warning system-monitoring of an area at risk and for natural resources management. The dissemination of environmental information derived from the use of data from meteorological satellites has been realized to be cost-effective and efficient, and has contributed to improved weather information provided by the national meteorological services. However, popularization of the use of weather-related information in Africa increases awareness of such information in improving the contribution towards the socio-economic development of the continent. Moreover, it is suggested that, since many governments globally are already beginning to reduce funding to the NMSs, they should organize themselves to use marketing principles in order to increase the economic benefit to the user as well as the nation by providing user-tailored weather information using the current remote sensing techniques. User feedback information is also important to the improvement of the NMSs in contributing to socio-economic development.
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