In mid September, the International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI) helped launch an innovative new data platform in Lusaka, Zambia that combines satellite rainfall estimates with the country’s existing network of rain gauges. The platform, developed with the Zambia Meteorological Department and through funding from NASA, is the latest to come out of IRI’s Enhancing National Climate Services (ENACTS) initiative which aims to address the persistent problem of data scarcity and lack of access to climate information products in many African countries. The World Bank Group’s

In June 2016, over 60 participants gathered at the College of insurance in Nairobi to discuss best practices and share their knowledge and expertise on index insurance, particularly livestock insurance and agriculture insurance. The discussions were quite timely, as the Government of Kenya recently allocated US$6 million for crop and livestock insurance for smallholder producers for next year, as one of the ‘key government flagship projects to drive the transformative agenda’. This is a five-fold increase in budget from the previous years with strong allocations toward data systems and premium

Subsistence farmers are often among the world’s most poor and they will need access to financial products if they are to adapt to climate change and the extreme drought, floods and storms it brings, said Her Majesty Queen Máxima of the Netherlands during the 4th International Climate Change Adaptation Conference in Rotterdam on May 11, 2016. Her Majesty believes that financial services that are more inclusive and insurance innovations, such as index insurance, help reduce many smallholder farmers' vulnerability and increase their ability to escape poverty, and also cites the the Kilimo Salama

The World Bank has welcomed the government's partnership with local insurance companies in crop and livestock cover policies, saying they will benefit smallholder farmers.Country director for Kenya, Ms Diarietou Gaye, said the programme has the potential to positively impact the country's economic development since it will help increase production as well as producer incomes."The large majority of the poor in Kenya are farmers and it will enable them to adopt improved production processes to help break the poverty cycle of low investment and low returns," she said.The bank's Disaster Risk

NAIROBI, March 12, 2016- The Government of Kenya today launched the Kenya National Agricultural Insurance Program, which is designed to address the challenges that agricultural producers face when there are large production shocks, such as droughts and floods. The program, which is designed as a partnership between the government and the private sector, was developed with assistance from the World Bank Group and builds on the experience of similar programs in Mexico, India, and China. One program line will focus on livestock insurance, while another will focus on maize and wheat insurance.

Mr. Tanguy Touffut of AXA Corporate Solutions discusses the benefits of parametric insurance, which he sees as a promising solution for farmers and other weather-sensitive industries against climate-change effects. It is nothing new: climate change, a phenomenon in full effect, has many drastic consequences of all types for people, companies, and entire economies alike. It has been observed that weather extremes are increasing as a consequence of climate change. In January 2015, AXA Corporate Solutions entered into a partnership with the World Bank’s Global Index Insurance Facility (GIIF). The

In a VOA article, the Kilimo Salama projected, funded by the Global Index Insurance Facility and the Syngenta Foundation, is cited for having provided insurance to about 200,000 farmers in east Africa, mainly in Kenya, Rwanda and Tanzania. Because it is so expensive to verify losses on large numbers of small landholdings, the traditional type of individual loss-based insurance is not always viable. That has led to index-based insurance for smallholder farmers for weather-related risks. In the long run in the developing world, specialists say, what is needed most is investment in science and