“ 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

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