Senegal

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1
Apr
“ 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...
12
Feb
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...
This report explores evidence and insights from five case studies that have made significant recent progress in addressing the challenge of insuring poor smallholder farmers and pastoralists in the developing world. In India, national index insurance programmes have reached over 30 million farmers through a mandatory link with agricultural credit and strong government support. In East Africa (Kenya, Rwanda and Tanzania), the Agriculture and Climate Risk Enterprise (ACRE) has recently scaled to reach nearly 200,000 farmers, bundling index insurance with agricultural credit and farm inputs...
The soil that Abdoulaye Ndiaye holds in his hand is dry and dusty. A little further away in the Kaolack region the groundnut plants are already beginning to spring up in the fields, but in Paskoto village Abdoulaye and his fellow farmers have not seen a drop so far this season. "The most important challenge for us is the weather. It is God who decides. We have no choice, but are just left looking for ways to handle the situation," Abdoulaye says, now using his hand to shield his eyes against the stark sunlight.
While access to credit is a key instrument to alleviate rural poverty, microfinance institutions (MFIs) are often unable to expand their agriculture lending portfolio. One of the key constraints that MFIs face is the exposure of agriculture lending to shocks such as drought, flood, or locust which can put farmers in a situation where they are unable to repay their loans. Major agriculture shocks can indeed lead to loan defaults and bank runs therefore resulting in destruction of risk capital, reduced access to liquidity, decreased lending and sometimes insolvency. Evidence shows that credit...
PlaNet Guarantee, member of the PlaNet Finance Group, and the GIIF come together to launch the first regional management platform for index insurance. The objective is to cover 60 000 farmers in West Africa by 2015. While agriculture remains the main economic sector in West Africa (on average 30% of the GDP of countries in the region and 70% of the workforce), no risk management tool is offered to farmers to secure their income. In case of drought, floods, or due to other factors that could cause a significant drop in yields, farmers currently receive no form of protection. The traditional...
PG activities started in 2012 with weather station-based index insurance (maize, groundnut). Nevertheless the first year the price of the product was really high and few farmers bought the product. The product was reviewed, together with the farmers’ organizations, and CIRAD in 2013.
At the request of the Ministry of Finance of Senegal, a feasibility study was completed in 2009 to assess the potential of index insurance. This study recommended the development of weather-based index insurance for commercial farmers, and suggested a pilot for groundnut farmers in two departments – Nioro and Kaffrine. As a follow-up to these recommendations, CNAAS requested in 2011 financial and technical assistance from the World Bank in order to pilot-test index insurance for groundnut farmers. The objective of the pilot was 1) to test the operational and technical procedures of the...
In 2011, at the request of CIMA and FANAF, a regional study on microinsurance was conducted with the technical assistance and financial support from the World Bank. This report showed that a new regional framework was required for microinsurance and agricultural index-based insurance, which had been absent, in the CIMA zone. The member countries are Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Comoros, Chad, Cote d’Ivoire, Gabon, Guinea, Equatorial Guinea, Mali, Niger, Senegal, and Togo.
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