Sub-Saharan Africa

IFC brought together leading insurers and regulators from across Africa to build farmer resilience
Financial inclusion is critical to development in Africa. Yet, many smallholder farmers and micro, small & medium-sized Enterprises (MSMEs ) on the continent have limited access to financial products, including climate-resilient microinsurance and other insurance services. Past December 2022, IFC - International Finance Corporation convened representatives from Cameroon, Kenya, Nigeria, Mozambique, Zambia, and Zimbabwe to discuss building the capacity of companies and regulators to design agricultural insurance products and best practices for assessing the insurance value of smallholder
DRC: Creating crop insurance market and protecting smallholders’ farmers
Located in the heart of Africa, with a land surface area of 2.3 million km2, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is the largest country in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) with rich soil and subsoil; over 80 million ha of fertile and arable land and 52 percent of all freshwater resources in SSA. Agriculture accounts for about 20 percent of GDP and employs some 70-75 percent of the economically active population[1]. DRC could potentially feed the entire African continent, yet it is currently unable to adequately feed its own population. The immense potential of the agricultural sector as a vehicle
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Well-designed insurance programs can help to improve farmers’ resilience, access to finance, and high-quality inputs. To this end, IFC and Zimbabwe's insurance regulator, the Insurance and Pensions Commission (IPEC), issued a press release highlighting their collaboration to create a market for agricultural insurance products in Zimbabwe. The goal is to protect smallholder farmers against weather-related crop damage and other shocks. Through this project, the team will assess the risks faced by smallholder farmers, and their coping mechanisms, and also evaluate the farmers' appetite for
Dissemination Workshop: Madagascar Agriculture Insurance Diagnostic
The agriculture and agro-processing sectors are the mainstay of Madagascar’s economy, accounting for about 24 percent of GDP in 2020. About 80 percent of the country’s population is involved in agriculture. However, due to its geographical location, Madagascar is largely affected by natural disasters, including droughts, cyclones, and floods, which threaten agricultural productivity. The International Finance Corporation (IFC) is organizing a workshop to disseminate key results of the Madagascar Agriculture Insurance Diagnostic in partnership with the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock
The Global Index Insurance Facility picked up valuable moments and testimonials from donors, guest speakers, and participants at the Africa AgTech & Inclusive Insurance Challenge hosted at Sankalp 2022, which took place last month in Kenya, Nairobi. “This was a great opportunity for start-ups in this space to collaborate with IFC and its partners and bring to the fore game-changing ideas that will contribute to the transformation of Africa’s agricultural sector”, said Fatou Assah, GIIF Program Manager. Click here to watch the extended version of the wrap-up video.
Africa AgTech & Inclusive Insurance Challenge: 5 Finalists
In March 2022, in a joint effort, the Sankalp Forum and the IFC’s Global Index Insurance Facility (GIIF), ran the Africa AgTech & Inclusive Insurance Challenge aimed to celebrate and support young entrepreneurs who are working at the intersection of agriculture, insurance, climate, and gender to build resilience for smallholder farmers. Together, they identified 5 of the most promising AgTech enterprises who are looking to scale their innovative solutions that are driving agriculture resilience across sub-Saharan Africa. “The role of technology and innovation will be critical to driving growth
Moroccan and Ghanaian MSME Resilience in the face of COVID-19
On behalf of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH and Allianz RE joined forces to support vulnerable communities in Morocco and Ghana in developing integrated risk management approaches for climate risks. In Morocco, the implemented risk management activities of this Public-Private Partnership are targeted at Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (SMEs) located in Industrial Zones (IZ). The Ait Melloul Industrial Park was selected as a pilot IZ, because it has an economic value for the
Ghanaian MSME Resilience In the face of COVID-19
MSMEs are one of the most important, yet vulnerable, drivers of development in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). This stems from the fact that, while micro-, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) are known to support over 50% of all livelihoods on the continent (both formal and informal), these firms often face a plethora of heterogenous risks that regularly put their survival and continuous operations in jeopardy. These risks can range from those faced uniquely at a firm level (such as credit, crime and infrastructural risks) to those endured at a much larger, systemic scale (such as climate
Sovereign Flood Risk  Pre-Feasibility Study for  Ghana – A Summary
Climate change is manifested in Ghana through extreme weather events, especially flooding. The Greater Accra Metropolitan Area (GAMA) is particularly exposed to these recurrent shocks threatening economic development and human lives. Many public assets and infrastructure are key to flood control and risk mitigation in urban areas, but at the same time can be severely affected by extreme weather events and climate risks themselves. However, in Ghana, most public assets and infrastructure are not insured. This might be due to a relatively low understanding of insurance and the unavailability of
Developing a Public  Asset Register
Urban flooding is a significant issue in Ghana, particularly in the Greater Accra Metropolitan Area (GAMA). Government agencies and municipalities seek to minimize damage from natural disasters, also for their public assets, through a variety of prevention measures. Nevertheless, a residual risk will always remain. Risk transfer within an Integrated Disaster Risk Management (IDRM) is central. For the development of an insurance product for public infrastructure assets various information about them, such as their value as well as their precise locations and previous flood occurrences for the