IBLI Index in Loiyangalani based on data up to 18 Feb 2013 – 5 Mar 2013

The pdf below provides the update on the predicted livestock mortality index and the summary of the underlying data in Loiyangalani for October 2012 – February 2013 (Short Rain Short Dry, SRSD) insurance coverage period based on the data up to Tuesday, March 05, 2013.

Loiyangalani.pdf

 

IBLI Index in North Horr based on data up to 18 Feb 2013 – 5 Mar 2013

The pdf below provides the update on the predicted livestock mortality index and the summary of the underlying data in North Horr for October 2012 – February 2013 (Short Rain Short Dry, SRSD) insurance coverage period based on the data up to Tuesday, March 05, 2013.

North Horr.pdf

 

IBLI Index in Laisamis based on data up to 18 Feb 2013 – 5 Mar 2013

The pdf below provides the update on the predicted livestock mortality index and the summary of the underlying data in Laisamis for October 2012 – February 2013 (Short Rain Short Dry, SRSD) insurance coverage period based on the data up to Tuesday, March 05, 2013.

Laisamis.pdf

 

IBLI Index in Maikona based on data up to 18 Feb 2013 – 5 Mar 2013

The pdf below provides the update on the predicted livestock mortality index and the summary of the underlying data in Maikona for October 2012 – February 2013 (Short Rain Short Dry, SRSD) insurance coverage period based on the data up to Tuesday, March 05, 2013.

Maikona.pdf

 

Insuring the Uninsured… OIC’s new Index Based Livestock Insurance for Borena pastoralists

Oromia Insurance Company (OIC) has recently launched a new product dubbed Index Based Livestock Insurance (IBLI) for pastoralists in Borena Zone, Oromia National Regional State. For farmers and pastoralists in Ethiopia’s drought vulnerable zone, the launching of IBLI is very good news.

Borena has been affected by drought recurrently over the past couple of years. According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, in 2010 and 11, drought in Borena caused serious damage to the rich livestock resources of the region. As a result 412,000 out of a total of 1.29 million people in the region were receiving food assistance including aid provided under the Productive Safety Net Programme.

Whenever drought hits the area, forage crop and water availability are seriously affected making survival of livestock in the area difficult. As a result pastoralists, whose livelihoods depend mainly on livestock resources, lose much of their herds during drought seasons.

This sustains the cycle of poverty in the area, further casting a shadow over their hope of a better future. It is to such people that OIC now brings a new of its kind insurance service, bringing subscribers relief.

Read more… Ethiopian Business Review, October – November 2012 Edition : Amanyehun R. Sisay

 

IBLI index color coded map based for October 2012

The pdf below provides a color coded map of the predicted mortality index in all 5 Marsabit divisions for October 2012, and also posts the index status at the previous 6 potential payment periods.

5IndexAreaMarsabit.pdf

 

Index-based insurance arms East African pastoralists against uncertainty

On 19 September, IBLI collaborator Michael Carter from the University of California-Davis gave an in-depth presentation at the latest live streamed science seminar held by the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS).

He discussed how index-based insurance is moving forward as a viable policy alternative to insure farmers against risks, and shared research into the role and potential of index insurance in rural development.

Using the Index Based Livestock Insurance project as an example, Carter argued that index based insurance could be an alternative way for vulnerable people ‘overcome the poverty trap.’

Read the full CCAFS story – also with presentation and video!

 

Livestock insurance – protecting Kenya’s pastoralists from drought

CNN’s Nima Elbagir today reports on the IBLI micro-insurance scheme in northern Kenya that is offering hope to farmers in the region.

Speaking on CNN’s Marketplace Africa, Elbagir reports how, now the rains have come, farmers know they must prepare for the next drought that will inevitably come.

Fifty-nine-year-old Wacho Yayo lost 10 of his 15 cows. These are the survivors. He can’t afford to replenish his herd, but thanks to livestock insurance that has been set up in this part of Kenya, he should afford to buy four new goats.

Wacho Yayo is one of 650 herders who received compensation for the loss of thousands of animals. This initiative has been piloted by the Nairobi-based organization, the International Livestock Research Institute, and is backed by British and U.S. government development departments and the World Bank.

And now there are plans to expand this project across northern Kenya and southern Ethiopia. This is such a remote and vast area it would be impossible to count all the dead animals. Images from U.S. satellites are used to quantify the loss of foliage in each area. This determines who should be compensated and by how much.

Watch the video

Read the transcript

 

Designing Index-Based Livestock Insurance to manage asset risk in northern Kenya

A new article in the Journal of Risk and Insurance by Sommarat Chantarat, Andrew Mude, Christopher Barrett and Michael Carter describes our index-based livestock insurance (IBLI) product piloted among pastoralists in Northern Kenya, where insurance markets are effectively absent and uninsured risk exposure is a main cause of poverty.

It describes the methodology used to design the contract and its underlying index of predicted area-average livestock mortality, established statistically using longitudinal observations of household-level herd mortality fit to remotely sensed vegetation data. Household-level performance analysis based on simulations finds that IBLI removes 25–40 percent of total livestock mortality risk. We describe the contract pricing and the risk exposures of the underwriter to establish IBLI’s reinsurability on international markets.

Download the article

 

Insuring livestock in Kenya, via satellite

Index-Based Livestock Insurance enables a private insurance company to create policies for northern Kenya’s herders. (John Warburton-Lee/Awl Images/Getty Images)

Camels mean cash in Kenya. But severe drought routinely kills off livestock, and families go bankrupt, unless they have an innovative insurance plan.

Brenda Wandera’s iPhone buzzes in her lap. A text message has made its way through the blurry heat of Kenya’s Chalbi Desert, and it changes her next move. “As soon as we get to Kalacha, we have to go to Network,” she says.

Go to Network, I wonder. That must be a Kenyan turn of phrase for “finding a cell tower.”

I’ve been warned that Kalacha is off the grid, which would make it one of the more remote corners of Africa, where mobile-phone and Internet service in even far-flung villages can be stronger and more regular than in parts of the American Southwest or Appalachia. Indeed, Kalacha is isolated. It sits in northern Kenya, about 40 miles from the border with Ethiopia, just at the edge of the Chalbi. Rounded huts of thatched grass zigzag across dry land. The horizon is dark and bulbous and looks very, very far away.

Our Land Cruiser drives toward one of those bulbs, a massive mound of volcanic rocks. Wandera hops out of the car, clutching her iPhone, and springs up the uneven hillock, 30 or so feet tall. At the top, a half dozen local women huddle on one edge. Their abayas — lemon-yellow, tomato-red, sequined garments — look especially colorful against the monochrome flatlands stretched out below. They chat on cell phones tucked under their tightly pulled scarves.

Read more….. by Jina Moore,  Miller Mc Cune (Feb 2012)