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

Poor farmers all over the world are increasingly falling prey to natural disasters, droughts and torrential rain largely due to climate change. But there is some good news as well. Thanks to new technologies, the widespread use of satellites, and more powerful computers, such events can largely be predicted in advance, thus making possible novel and more efficient insurance schemes for those at risk. In an interview with AFP, Gilles Galludec, Program Manager of the World Bank-run Global Index Insurance Facility discusses how index insurance schemes differ from traditional indemnity coverage in

The Joint GIIF-GAN Knowledge Sharing Forum “Assessing value from index insurance products” was organized by the Global Index Insurance Facility of the World Bank Group, USAID and Impact Insurance Facility of ILO in the morning of 16 September in Pacifica Headquarters in Paris. The client value of the cotton insurance project in Burkina Faso, implemented by PlaNet Guarantee, was assessed using 2 methodologies based on a double trigger approach. The scheme works on the average yield approach of the Group of Cotton Producers (GCP) and the yield of the neighbouring GCP in order to avoid all

For several years, insuring harvests against the climate hazards that regularly destroy farmers’ crops in developing countries has for several years been a major tool in the fight against poverty, mainly in Africa and Asia, where between 400 and 500 million farmers survive on very low incomes. At the Convergences World Forum in Paris on 9 September 2015, Syngenta Foundation for Sustainable Agriculture and GIIF speak about the innovations in index insurance and the success of the Kilimo Salama project in Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania. Expanded in 2014, the program develops and offers insurance for

Collier argues that index insurance is best suited to cover disasters which occur every 20 years or greater because severe risks lower premium costs. Below are excerpts form the interview. Q: You have done substantial research, notably with Jerry Skees on index insurance. Why do you think that index insurance needs to be designed as “disaster insurance” rather than “crop insurance”? A: We need a new frame of reference for household markets. Up to now, the consensus focus has been crop yields. Yet the effects of bad weather on household well-being are often multifaceted and poorly captured by

GIIF, a member of the World Bank Group, signed two grant agreements, with a combined value of $3.9 million, with the Syngenta Foundation for Sustainable Agriculture to expand index-based insurance to small-scale farmers in Kenya, Rwanda and Tanzania. Index-based weather insurance can protect against the adverse effects of climate change and help to strengthen food security in rural communities.