Mali

In Mali, climate change has a major influence on agricultural activities and production methods. Smallholder farmers are vulnerable to extreme weather events and can experience large agricultural losses.

Crop insurance protects farmers from natural disasters, poor harvests and other unforeseen circumstances. One of the popular crop insurance providers in Mali is OKO finance. OKO offers crop insurance to smallholder farmers through a simple interface. Only a mobile phone is needed and the information can be accessed via USSD, API or mobile app. However, only an insurance cannot assist farmers in optimizing their farming practices and yield.

Weather Impact has now joined a partnership with OKO Finance and Georg-August-Universität Göttingen to provide a combined service of crop insurance and agri-weather advisories to smallholder farmers in Mali. With the help of the InsuResilience Solutions Fund (ISF), the consortium will add Weather Impact’s weather and climate advisory services to the insurance product.

The bundled services have the goal to:
–         Improve agricultural productivity
–         Improve customer satisfaction and the service retention rate
–         Reduce losses of farmers

By bundling weather information and crop insurance we provide farmers a stronger product, which improves the livelihood and satisfaction of farmers, and increases the customer loyalty to the product. The reduced losses potentially helps OKO to reduce the premiums of their insurance products.

During the project, the University of Göttingen will perform a comparison between farmers that only use the crop insurance product and farmers that receive the bundled services. This impact study will provide insights into the gain that farmers get from these value-added services.