A workshop funded by the National Science Foundation's Climate Dynamics Program and Switzerland's National Climate Program convened in Bern, Switzerland on March 29–31 to discuss the establishment of a multinational, multidisciplinary study of the East African rift lakes. The 10‐year project, entitled the International Decade of the East African Lakes (IDEAL), has two primary goals. The first is to obtain long, high‐resolution records of climatic change in tropical East Africa. The second is to provide a comprehensive training program for African students and scientists and to strengthen African institutions' capabilities in the aquatic sciences, resulting in collaboration between African and northern hemisphere limnologists and paleoclimatologists.