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.”

A l’initiative du Global Index Insurance Facility (GIIF) du Groupe de la Banque mondiale a eu lieu le vendredi 19 janvier 2018 à Abidjan un Atelier de restitution des résultats de l’étude sur le Développement d’un marché de l’assurance agricole indicielle en Côte d’Ivoire, selon Abidjan.net. L’objectif général assigné à cette étude vise à Promouvoir le développement et la croissance d’un marché local viable et pérenne pour l’assurance agricole indicielle en Côte d’Ivoire, via une assistance technique et un accompagnement financier. «Avant le début de la période d'assurance, un indice

The Government of Nigeria is working to increase insurance coverage for Nigerian agricultural primary producers from 500,000 to 3.8 million through the recently introduced index-based agricultural insurance, New Stage reports. The Nigeria Incentive-Based Risk Sharing System for Agricultural Lending (NIRSAL) is collaborating with the Royal Exchange Assurance, the Nigerian Meteorological Agency (NIMET), and Cellulant to develop of a technology-driven hybrid index insurance product that will include the area yield index, weather index, and price index insurance.

Johannesburg, South Africa, 18 January 2018 – IFC, a member of the World Bank Group, today announced a grant extension to Mayfair Insurance Company Zambia Limited, to support Mayfair in scaling up its weather-based index insurance product line in Zambia. The additional performance-based grant, awarded through the Global Index Insurance Facility, is expected to help Mayfair reach an additional 300,000 farmers by December 2019. 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

According to a Thomson Reuters Foundation report, The African and Asian Resilience in Disaster Insurance Scheme (ARDIS), led by VisionFund International, the microfinance arm of World Vision, and Global Parametrics, a new venture backed by the British and German governments, is setting up to help up to 4 million poor people in Africa and Asia rebuild their lives after climate disasters. The insurance program will support mostly women farmers and their families, affected by droughts in Kenya, Malawi, Mali, Zambia and Cambodia, and by tropical cyclones in Myanmar.