Having enough food in East Africa depends largely on the productivity of smallholder farms, which in turn depends on farmers’ ability to invest in their farms. Weather insurance can encourage farmers to make these critical investments by improving their access to credit. The Global Index Insurance Facility (GIIF)—an IFC/IBRD collaboration housed under IFC’s Access to Finance’s Global Retail/Microfinance Cluster—is an innovative program that is expanding access to insurance against weather risks and natural disasters to farmers, livestock herders, and others, particularly in Africa and the Caribbean. This SmartLesson explores two GIIF projects that have provided index insurance to smallholder farmers in East Africa: the Syngenta Foundation for Sustainable Agriculture (SFSA) project in Kenya and Rwanda and the MicroEnsure project in Rwanda.