Sub-Saharan Africa

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Peter Gross, Regional Director in Africa with MicroEnsure, talks to Bank Innovation online magazine about how MicroEnsure is providing micro-insurance to 15 million people in 17 countries in Africa and Asia. He explains that the reason for the poor uptake of insurance in these mass market economies can be boiled down to 4 factors: cost, trust (or lack of it), access (or lack of it), and understading (or lack of it). Click here to read the full interview.
15
Feb
Key findings from the Global expert workshop co-hosted by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Netherlands and the Rabobank Group and organized by the World Bank’s FISF initiative . Workshop report including links to presentations made at the workshop is available here: Report on Financial Inclusion of Agriculture-Dependent Households Need to focus on broader array of financial services rather than just credit or insurance for agricultural production . Agricultural households have a broad range of financial service needs, several of them for lifecycle and business needs not related to agriculture...
19
Jan
This post was originally produced during the GIIF Conference held in Paris at the OECD Headquarters. The 6 key lessons learnt that emerge from the panel are as follows: Insurance needs to be part of a value add package that generates higher income for the farmers Governments play a key role in creating markets for agricultural insurance. Experiences in Peru, India and Senegal point to government interventions such as premium support, risk financing, and linkage to credit. There is a need to design and offer the right insurance product. Area Yield Index Insurance may offer an adequate...
New Trends in Agricultual Finance
Agricultural finance is crucial to support the growth of the agricultural sector. Indeed, it is essential for food security, job creation, and overall economic growth. This synthesis report presents a summary of research studies on five key areas of agricultural finance innovation prepared under the G20 Global Partnership for Financial Inclusion (GPFI), as well as the presentations and discussions of these study findings during the “G20 Roundtable on Innovations in Agricultural Finance” convened on September 9, 2015 in Antalya, Turkey by the Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) Finance Sub-Group...
Farma Bagayoko works in a greenhouse filled with tomatoes at the Sidibe Argo-Techniques in Katibougou Village, outside Bamako, Mali on November 3, 2013. Sidibe Argo-Techniques is growing watermelons, sweet peppers, tomatoes and other vegetables. Photo © Dominic Chavez/World Bank
15
Dec
Interview with Xavier Gine, Lead Economist within the World Bank Research Department (DEC). 1/ What do we know about index insurance after about 10 years of experience? There has been a lot of research around the question of take-up and impact of index insurance . Despite the potentially large welfare benefits, voluntary take-up of index insurance products has been rather limited so far. Explanations for this low demand could include: The first reason is that the product may be expensive , relative to the existing risk coping strategies. After all, when it is not subsidized as is the case for...

Gloria Grandolini, F&M GP Senior Director, World Bank Group

Interview with Gloria Grandolini, F&M GP Senior Director, World Bank Group Over the last 10 years , our work at the World Bank Group (WBG) has led to over 35 million farmers benefiting from new or improved insurance products. The WBG recognizes the importance of making available financial solutions, particularly insurance instruments to compensate for losses following adverse natural events.
28
Aug
The Global Index Insurance Facility together with the ILO's Impact Insurance Facility, USAID and BASIS/I4-sponsored Global Action Network (GAN), organised a webinar to look into the question "How can index insurance be bundled with other financial and non financial services". This webinar featured speakers from global organizations who shared experiences and discussed which services and activities in the agriculture value chain are most aligned for bundling. It explored mechanisms and issues in bundling, and also looked into the possible impact of bundling on pricing & off-take of index...
Smallholder farmers in Zambia are vulnerable to weather-related shocks such as drought, flooding, and irregular rainfall. Insurance can be a good risk management tool for these farmers, but the traditional insurance market largely fails to meet their demand for affordable insurance. Index insurance provides an innovative and more efficient solution for them to protect their crops against losses and encourage investment. In March 2016, the Global Index Insurance Facility signed a capacity building grant with Mayfair Insurance, a private insurer registered in Zambia. The grant enabled them to...
20
Jul
What happens when a major national development organization – GIZ and a leading private insurer – Allianz SE get together to build innovation in micro-insurance? Watch full video of the event here Experts presented key insights on micro-insurance with a larger view on how these lessons learnt can be applied to other inclusive insurance projects and to various other sectors. The 60 minute session showcased case-studies ranging from how GIZ has assisted Allianz in turning a corporate responsibility charitable micro-insurance story into a fully-fledged and profitable micro-insurance business...
14
May
Can you give us some examples of key trade-offs that you have faced when providing technical support to the overarching policy discussion on regulation of index insurance in Kenya? The first trade-off that we have faced was in the definition of insurable interest. In the law of insurance, the insured must have an interest in the subject matter of his or her policy, or such policy will be regarded as a form of gambling. However, in Kenya most farmers do not own their land as they work on communal farms or as wage laborers. We therefore decided in our policy framework to define the insurable...
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