Mali
Bundled service: agri-weather advisories and crop insurance
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.
Weather Impact has 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.
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.
The bundled services have the goal to:
– Improve agricultural productivity
– Improve customer satisfaction and the service retention rate
– Reduce losses of farmers
Positive impact
Preliminary results, released in early 2025, show very positive outcomes for farmers using the bundled insurance and weather advisory service in Mali. The team from the University of Göttingen conducted an endline survey involving 1,333 farmers to assess the impact of the bundled insurance and weather forecast services on farmers’ activities and attitudes towards the insurance product itself. The study was carried out as a randomized control trial (RCT), comparing a set of indicators across three groups of users:
- one receiving the insurance + weather bundle,
- one with insurance only,
- and a control group with no intervention.
Key results are:
- Farmers who received both services were willing to pay on average 260 CFA Francs more than those with insurance alone, showing that they clearly valued the added weather information.
- Satisfaction levels were also higher: farmers with the bundled product rated their satisfaction at 3.8 out of 5, compared to 3.3 for those with insurance only.
- Almost 47% had already renewed their insurance for the next season, while an additional 32% planned to do so. Before the introduction of the bundled service, farmers tend to insure only for one year as they did not see the benefit.
The study also found measurable improvements in farm productivity. Farmers who received both insurance and weather forecasts achieved an average maize yield of about 1,940 kg per season, compared to 1,550 kg among those with insurance only, an increase of roughly 25%. These results suggest that timely weather information helped farmers make better decisions and manage risks more effectively. The survey also identified opportunities for further improvement, such as delivering messages in local languages like Bambara to reach more farmers and adding new topics such as pest and disease control (50% interest), soil moisture (30%), and new agricultural technologies (45%). Overall, the findings show that combining crop insurance with weather information can significantly improve farmers’ productivity, resilience, and satisfaction in Mali.
Scale-up service
Weather Impact and OKO have now entered a scaling-up phase of the service, offering Malian farmers both the insurance + weather SMS bundle and the weather SMS service as a stand-alone product. This phase is supported by a co-financing scheme from the Business Partnership Facility of the Luxembourg Development Agency (LuxDev). Over the next two years, the goal is to build a large and stable client base, enabling the service to become financially sustainable and continue operating without the need for external funding.
Fig 1. Text message by OKO insurance. Fig 2. Analysis of pilot results
