First Steering Committee Meeting of the Agriculture Index Insurance held in Cote d’Ivoire
On April 30, 2019, the first Steering Committee meeting for the GIIF project in Cote d’Ivoire took place at Hotel Ibis Plateau, Abidjan. The meeting gathered 15 participants from the Government, insurance sector players and producer associations, to discuss about the setup of the Steering Committee as an enabling tool and guidance framework for achieving the project’s desired targets and outcomes.
The meeting was chaired by Mr. Karim Diarassouba, the Insurance Commissioner, who also gave the opening speech. He emphasized the importance of agriculture and index-based insurance as a major pillar of the Government’s financial sector development goals. He urged GIIF partner insurance companies – Atlantique Assurances-CI and AXA-CI – to work together with umbrella producer associations to spread the word about the benefits of agriculture insurance, so that smallholder farmers can massively enroll in the scheme.
Echoing the Insurance Commissioner, both Mr. Bernard Comoe, Director of Planning and Financing at the Ministry of Agriculture, and Mr. Saliou Bakayoko, President of ASACI, highlighted the significant gap in terms of market coverage that the GIIF project will help to address, and the need for strong incentives in the initial heavy-lifting phase of index insurance in Cote d’Ivoire.
In August 2018, GIIF signed a 2-year Grant Agreement with two local insurance companies – Atlantique Assurances Cote d’Ivoire (AACI) and AXA Cote d’Ivoire (AXA-CI). Both are expected to reach around 120,000 farmers by the end of 2020.
For more information, please contact: Racine Ly, Financial Sector Specialist (rly@ifc.org).