De-risking agriculture through crop insurance? Insights from an impact evaluation of novel insurance solutions
• Climate change has led to increased production risks especially for smallholder farmers who often tend to be more vulnerable
• Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) has several climate change hotspots and is more vulnerable to weather shocks compared to other regions.
• >363 million people affected by drought between 1980-2014 causing > US$31 billion in losses – with 19 billion in East Africa (FAO, 2015)
• Agricultural insurance is a risk management tool for extreme weather events; however, its coverage remains lowest in SSA (Hess and Hazell, 2016).