African Farmers Now Supported With Mobile Drought Insurance
By Staff Writer
Apr 11, 2016 05:53 AM EDT
Regions
Josephine Mbinya, a farmer, poses for a photograph on her maize plantation at her farm in Joska, Kenya, on Thursday, Jan. 28, 2016. Even with increased access to fertilizer and irrigation, there are limits to what small farmers will be able to grow and African countries will need to lure more foreign investment to ramp up mechanized food production, according to Ernst Janovsky, the head of agribusiness at Barclays Africa, a unit of Barclays Plc. (Photo : Riccardo Gangale/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
A farmer holds Cassava crop uprooted from her farm at Alabata village outskirts of Ibadan city, southwest Nigeria, on January 27, 2016. The African Cassava Agronomy Initiative designed to help African farmers to increase cassava production on the continent in order to compete globally was launched at the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture in Nigeria's commercial city of Ibadan, headquarters of the institute. The project which brought together partners and initiatives already involved in the cassava value chain was funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. (Photo : PIUS UTOMI EKPEI/AFP/Getty Images)
Kenyan farmers will now be able to take advantage of the mobile insurance project that will support small-scale farmers to safeguard their crops against the dry seasons and other natural disasters.
Farmers who have at least one acre of land can insure themselves against extreme weather conditions. They will pay a 5% surcharge upon purchases of seeds and fertilizers registered with an insurance company that keep in touch with farmers through text messages.
The "insurance man" as it was called was a feature many Western countries are practicing in the past decades. Small amount will be collected by local agents on a weekly basis to give cover against long-term illness, funeral costs and unemployment, as reported by BBC.
According to Geeska Afrika Online, agriculture suffers more than any other sectors from financial exclusion. The introduction of mobile technology becomes vital in acknowledging the needs of the 80% of citizens who are counted out from the financial system. Local banks began to function more as "real" banks to cater to the needs of small and medium-sized enterprises run mostly by "agropreneurs"
The rapid growth of mobile platforms and the digital services that move across them are changing the world in many ways. For less fortunate people who live in rural and remote areas of Sub-Saharan Africa and Southern Asia, they can now see the promising course to financial stability, the Harvard Business Review reported.
Safaricom used to be Kenya's market leader but this year would be UAP Insurance launching in Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda. The insurance targets to support smallholders to balance the good and bad years as well as encourage farmers to invest more in their lands, assuring them of compensation when crops fail due to extreme weather conditions.
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