The potential of agriculture and insurance is greatly restricted by many challenges faced throughout the product lifecycle - from product design to client delivery to claim processing. Insuretech, at the intersection of insurance and technology, holds the potential to overcome those challenges and transform the insurance landscape. Integrating Insuretech innovations with agriculture insurance promises to enhance product design, improve sales and distribution, facilitate premium collection, and optimize servicing and claims processing. To leverage innovative solutions, the Global Index

The Nigeria Incentive-Based Risk Sharing System for Agricultural Lending (NIRSAL) has developed a new insurance product called NIRSAL Comprehensive Index Insurance (NCII) to mitigate the impact and losses of agricultural yields and market price risks for smallholder farmers, PM News Nigeria reports. "NIRSAL’s goal is to expand insurance products and coverage on agricultural lending across the entire value chain by growing coverage from about 0.5 million to 3.8 million primary producers,’’ said Aliyu Abdulhameed, Managing Director of NIRSAL. NCII was developed by the Corporation in conjunction

GIIF Program Manager Fatou Assah (far left) moderated a session at the Syngenta Foundation for Sustainable Agriculture International Conference on September 18, 2018, in Basel. The panel session "The Provider Perspective," discussants, including ACRE Africa's Rahab Kariuki, dove into detail on how many parts need to be moving in sync to deliver integrated solutions. | Key takeaways from the conference.

On November 16, 2018, more than 50 participants from the Financial Sector Conduct and Prudential Authority of South Africa attended a training session on the fundamentals of index insurance. The training was the first step in providing the regulators with the needed information and skills for the upcoming index insurance pilot in the country, which aims to protect smallholder farmers from weather-related risks. The workshop was delivered by the Global Index Insurance Facility (GIIF) at the request of the South African Insurance Association (SAIA), the representative body of the short-term

World Bank Group's Financial Sector Specialist Sharon Onyango (far left) moderated a session at the 14 th International Microinsurance Conference on November 7 in Lusaka. The panel session “ PPPs in the distribution of agricultural insurance” included discussants from both the public and private sectors, and dove into lessons learned from various PPPs from around the world and high-level considerations for setting up successful partnerships. The panelists were: Hailemelekot Teklegiorgis, Manager-in-charge - Financial Services, Ethiopian Agriculture Transformation Agency Humphrey Mulele

The World Bank Group has approved additional $14.6m IDA (loan and grant) financing for the Strengthening Climate Resilience (PPCR Phase II) Project that will help strengthen Zambia’s institutional framework for climate resilience and improve the adaptive capacity of vulnerable communities in the Barotse sub-basin of the Zambezi. The project is also expected to help integrate financial and technical services such as savings, micro-credit, and index insurance into the existing approaches to sustainable agriculture and climate resilience.

In the third edition of the InsuResilience newsletter, Fatou Assah, GIIF Program Manager, discusses the GIIF program, its objectives, and monitoring and evaluation. Read now

Poor rainfall in parts of Africa has triggered the largest insurance payout to date for smallholder farmers under the R4 Rural Resilience Initiative (R4), a program launched by the World Food Programme (WFP) and Oxfam America in 2011. African farmers will receive insurance payments totaling US$1.5 million to compensate for weather-related crop losses in Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Senegal, and Zambia, Reliefweb reports, according to a WFP press release.

ACRE Africa, a partner of the Global Index Insurance Facility and one of the pioneers of agriculture insurance in the African region, received the HEC-OCP Award for Best Technological Startup in the agriculture sector at the AfricaDays 2018 event. HEC Paris - Seed Project and OCP Africa recognized ACRE Africa as one of the startups that is shaping the future of agriculture while addressing the challenges due to climate change. Wairimu Muthike, ACRE Africa's Head of Business Development (image), was in France to accept the award. ACRE Africa offers technical support to the insurance and

There has been an increase in projects in sub-Saharan Africa to develop index insurance that helps farmers build resilience against climate change, EURACTIV.fr reports. Currently, dozens of projects are led by the World Bank to develop this type of insurance. In West Africa, initiatives are coordinated by GIIF's partner, PlaNet guarantee, in Benin, Burkina Faso, Mali, and Senegal. Anne Durez, head of marketing at PlaNet guarantee, index insurance follows a double objective: “stabilizing farmers’ incomes and allowing them to finance their activities.”