Kenya

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Jun
In May 2017, the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) was hailed as “Innovation of the Year” from the African Insurance Awards for its work on developing the index-based livestock insurance (IBLI) in the arid lands of Kenya and the Horn of Africa. Using Normalized Differenced Vegetation Index (NDVI) that monitors livestock stress and mortality based on grazing conditions, the innovation offers a more convenient, objective measure upon which insurance contracts can be written. Which such an index insurance, herders can recover losses more quickly during and after severe droughts...
Jacinta at her maize farm / Cr: ACRE Africa
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Mar
ACRE Africa, a GIIF partner in East Africa, is a microinsurance product designer that helps foster equity, fairness, and innovation in the agricultural sector. As farmers in the region experience changing weather conditions, with delayed rain and more frequent incidents of drought, ACRE Africa engages stakeholders along the agricultural value chain and advises insurers on the development and distribution of low-cost insurance to protect smallholders’ investments. The following story is told by one of the beneficiaries of ACRE Africa. Jacinta Mutuse is a 36-year old farmer and the mother of...
A $1.4 million grant from USAID is funding a University of California's project that will use a randomized, controlled trial to evaluate the impacts of combining programs that offer training, support, and aid with affordable insurance in Kenya. According to UC Davis , the new project is led by Michael Carter, a professor of agricultural and resource economics and director of the Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Assets and Market Access at UC Davis, and Dr. Andrew Mude from the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) in Kenya. Last year, Dr. Mude received the World Food Prize...
Thomson Reuters Foundation reports that thousands of pastoralists across six counties in northern and eastern Kenya will get payouts this month under the Kenyan government's subsidized livestock insurance scheme. The disbursement will total nearly 215 million Kenyan shillings ($2.08 million), according to the article. Recently, the Government declared a national disaster after more than 2.7 million people across half of the country have been affected by a severe drought, the worst in six years. The Kenya Livestock Insurance Program (KLIP), launched last year, was developed by Kenya's Ministry...
As the 2016 short rains came late, Kenya's Meteorological Department had to warn that the shortfall might affect crop production and livestock farming, Kenya's Daily Nation reported. The country and other Southern African nations are currently witnessing two kinds of drought — hydrological and agricultural — both of which are causing disaster as water and food have become scarce, the report added. “We are at the point where people need to adapt. There is need for diversification and shift in the kind of crops to plant, and buying of crop index insurance,” says Department of Meteorology's...
Edward and Pauline Mkopi, Trans Nzoia Farmers
In a case study, GIIF's Partner ACRE Africa reports that the project has helped Edward and Pauline Mkopi in Kenya protect their crops with weather index, area yield, and hybrid insurance. After several seasons of drought and excess rainfall, the Mkopis say "they now confidently invest in their maize and sunflower farm because they know they are insured against all kinds of risk." They also feel confident in working with ACRE Africa because the product relies on accurate data to determine how to do payouts.
In a New York Times' Opinion, Tina Rosenberg wrote that Andrew Mude, a Kenyan economist at the International Livestock Research Institute, is helping headers in Southern Africa insure their liveshock. Dr. Mude was awarded the Norman Borlaug Award for Field Research and Application, which is a major prize in agricultural research, given by the World Food Prize Foundation. "Mude’s program began in one Kenyan county in 2010. Today, about 16,000 families are insured; most are in Kenya, and some are in southern Ethiopia," the op-ed says. To read the article on New York Times, please click here .
On October 11, 2016, Joseph A. Owuor of The Insurance Regulatory Authority of Kenya presented a presentation entitled "Kenyan Experience with Parametric Insurance" at a workshop in Guatemala. Aimed at raising awareness on parametric insurance among supervisory authorities in Latin America and the Caribbean , t he First Regional Workshop on Parametric Insurance was put together by Microinsurance Catastrophe Risk Organisation (Micro) and participated by many stakeholders such as Access to Insurance Initiative, the International Research Institute for Climate and Society (Columbia University),...
Dr. Andrew Mude of the International Livestock Research Institute in Nairobi, Kenya, has been named the recipient of this year’s Norman Borlaug Award for his work in providing insurance to livestock herders in East Africa’s drylands through innovative, state-of-the art technologies. On October 12, 2016, Dr. Mude, a World Bank Group's grantee, was formally presented with US$10,000 and the “Norman Borlaug Award for Field Research and Application, endowed by the Rockefeller Foundation”, in Des Moines, Iowa, as part of the 2016 World Food Prize international symposium. The award was given in...
In this report, GIZ explores the trends in agricultural insurance and public relief as risk management tools in rural areas of developing countries. The report takes a closer look at the challenges in scaling up index-based insurance, linked to the demand form farmers, the design of indexes, the distribution of the insurance products, and the changing climate. Authors Ulrich Hess and Peter Hazell also propose solutions to the challenges in scaling up index insurance. To read the report, please click here .
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