Can you give us some examples of key trade-offs that you have faced when providing technical support to the overarching policy discussion on regulation of index insurance in Kenya? The first trade-off that we have faced was in the definition of insurable interest. In the law of insurance, the insured must have an interest in the subject matter of his or her policy, or such policy will be regarded as a form of gambling. However, in Kenya most farmers do not own their land as they work on communal farms or as wage laborers. We therefore decided in our policy framework to define the insurable...

What do you think of the upcoming index insurance regulation in Kenya? Well, at this stage, I think we have drafted a policy paper which sets guidelines for the future regulations , however I believe that we have here an opportunity to enhance access to insurance in Kenya. What are the expected benefits? One of the key expected benefits is the creation of a consumer protection framework. This means that index insurance products will need to be explained very clearly and in a simple way, and all the contract terms (ex: triggers, reference weather stations, index design etc...) will have to be...

Bénin " L’assurance pour le champ, on se demande si c’est une vérité. Maintenant, c’est une réalité pour moi!” Premières indemnisations dans le cadre du projet GIIF d’assurance indicielle pour les producteurs de maïs du Benin “L’assurance pour le champ, on se demande si c’est une vérité. Maintenant, c’est une réalité pour moi!” . C’est avec grand enthousiasme que Bessekourou Issiaka, producteur de maïs de 38 ans du Nord du Benin, a reçu ses premières indemnisations sur sa police d’assurance indicielle. A cause de la faible pluviométrie de cette année, les rendements de certaines de ses...

“ I did not believe in crop insurance before, but now it is a reality for me ”! It is with great enthusiasm that 38-year old maize farmer Bessekourou Issiaka from Northern Benin received the first payout on his weather insurance policy. Because of the lack of rain this season, some of his maize fields generated less than half of their usual yield, or 800 kg/ha instead of the usual 2000 kg/ha. He is therefore quite relieved to receive FCFA 90,000, about 180 dollar insurance payout which will help him repay the loan he took to purchase inputs for the maize production. Bessekourou Issiaka is one...

Insurers are trying to control costs and reach scale in agriculture insurance by designing meso-level insurance policies that cover large numbers of farmers associated with an aggregator (e.g. agribusiness firm, financial institution, input providers). Products are priced using a portfolio pricing model, meaning that the price is calculated on the basis of the whole group. This avoids the cost of assessing individual plots. A project in Mozambique supported by GIIF and implemented by reinsurance broker, Guy Carpenter, used a meso-level approach to cover cotton farmers through a public-private...

“ We’re all Senegalese, and we should all have access to insurance ” says Yoro POULO BA, a groundnut farmer from Ndoffane, a commune from the center of Senegal who just received insurance payouts as part of the GIIF-supported index insurance project. This year, the rains during the month of July - the sowing period for groundnut - were extremely low, therefore triggering automatic payouts for what is called “sowing failure”. The payouts that he has received amount to about 30% of the total insured amount, which is the amount of credit that he has borrowed for seeds and fertilizers needed for...

This map was created using data on rural loans. The GIS analysis shows where the density of loan amounts is higher (as opposed to where there are more individual loans). It is meant to highlight where the larger loans are concentrated. Notice that there are areas with many individual loans and low amount density. The methodology used to draw the map is as follows: The banks provided portfolio data with x/y coordinates in WGS84 format, which where projected and added to a basemap. Using the “point density” geographic analysis under the spatial analyst in ArcGIS 10.3, we derived a density of...

Weather variability is a key limiting constraint to investments and the modernization of agriculture in Senegal. The drought-prone Sahel is characterized by irregular rainfall and relatively poor soils. Created in 2008 as a public-private partnership, the National Agricultural Insurance Company of Senegal (CNAAS) is in charge of underwriting crop and livestock insurance. At the request of the Minister of Finance of Senegal, a feasibility study was completed in 2009 by the World Bank to assess the potential of index insurance. This study recommended the development of weather-based index...