Innovation Across Borders: Libya
Hamza Oun, UNICEF Libya, shares his experience scaling a youth-led early warning system for extreme weather events
Across 190 countries and territories, UNICEF colleagues and partners are on the frontlines of the greatest challenges affecting the lives of children and young people. Innovation Across Borders highlights the experiences, successes and learnings of innovation champions, committed to making positive social impact.
What has been the impact of your innovation?
In 2023, flooding in Libya led to the collapse of two dams and the deaths of nearly 6,000 people. It was the worst climate-related disaster in recent years, but not an isolated one in a country that is feeling the devastating impacts of increasingly frequent floods, storms and heatwaves.
Mozn (meaning “rain-bearing clouds” in Arabic) is an early warning system developed by the Roaya Foundation. It continuously processes global weather forecasts and compares them with live readings from a network of weather stations to detect emerging risks, track weather events and identify likely impact areas. It relays real-time meteorological data from 45 weather stations, measuring extreme heat, rainfall, flooding, dust and sandstorms, and when thresholds are reached, it shares clear alerts and follow-up guidance with its 1 million social media followers and over 100,000 app users, as well as first responders and local authorities.
Interactions and follower numbers are growing steadily, showing that Mozn is cutting through: people don’t just see the alerts, they engage with them at scale, expanding the audience we reach with our timely warnings and putting Mozn on course to become the Libya’s first national early warning system, built from the community level up.
Children pose for a photograph in flood-affected Soussa, eastern Libya
What challenges have you encountered?
Because Mozn is youth-led and Libya lacks any formal national early warning system, aligning the initiative’s ambition and role with public authorities takes continuous work.
We started with a lean pilot of 45 stations while building resilience into the system by adding redundancy in data capture and outreach and planning for future network upgrades and expansion.
We have to design with the routine challenges of connectivity disruptions and power outages in mind – for example by using solar power to run the weather stations and long-range radio frequency transmitters to keep them connected – and we ensure warning messages are simple and clear so that users can understand them and react quickly.
Scaling is human as much as technical, and training and sustaining the distributed youth observer network across remote areas demands steady investment, mentoring and clear guidance for actions to take in different scenarios, but it is this youth network that has proven to be Mozn’s greatest strength, building trust and engagement.
What have been the high points?
Being selected to receive funding and mentorship as part of UNICEF’s Spark Accelerator 2025 was a standout moment! I encouraged Roaya to apply because their idea was practical and rooted in community needs. The selection validated Roaya’s vision, recognized youth efforts in climate action and gave us all the momentum to move from concept to scale and national implementation.
What was your experience of collaborating with partners?
Roaya leads Mozn, handling fieldwork – including setting up weather stations, training volunteers and communicating with local residents – and running a large climate page on Facebook with over 910,000 followers, which helps alerts reach people fast.
UNICEF is part of Early Warnings for All, and in Libya our primary role is supporting responsible scaling by building an ecosystem around Mozn. We are developing an AI data-processing model that will turn raw weather station feeds into real-time insights and updates, and we are working with local youth observers for on-the-ground verification; with national disaster and meteorological authorities for technical input and standards; and with telecom providers to strengthen last-mile delivery to communities.
What have been your biggest lessons learned?
- Youth leadership is essential: when young people lead the outreach and formulate the wording, warning messages feel real and local, and people act on them.
- Keep it simple and resilient: short, clear alerts, with a backup plan for low connectivity, outperform complex dashboards.
- Start government alignment early: co-designing with the national disaster authority from the start helps ensure standards, credibility and long-term ownership.
Progress comes from steady iteration: small-scale pilots, rapid feedback loops and multiple refinements build lasting systems faster than one single, large-scale launch.
What are your hopes for the future of this innovation?
I want Mozn to be fully operational nationwide as an open-source platform that others can replicate to protect more people. My hope is that fewer families are caught off guard by floods, storms or heat waves because rapid warnings and simple early actions can save lives and reduce damage. I also want Mozn to be fully embedded in national systems so local authorities, first responders and communities follow the same playbook when severe weather is on its way.
What message around innovation do you have for colleagues around the world?
Innovation does not have to be complicated: the right idea is often in front of you. Keep an open mind, listen to others and start small; build one useful thing, learn from it and grow from there.
