Kenya Publications

Index insurance shows considerable promise, especially in settings like the arid and semi-arid lands of east Africa where conventional insurance to cover potentially catastrophic herd losses does not exist.

Index-based livestock insurance (IBLI), aims to protect against the covariate risk of catastrophic livestock loss due to drought. Understanding what determines access to IBLI by gender can shape strategies to equitably provide access to this and other innovative risk management products.

Understanding how farmers make their production choices is essential to designing effective interventions to promote new agricultural technologies to close yield gaps and reduce poverty.

This new BASIS research project will test this hypothesis, evaluating the impact of a new seed market actor like WSC on the incomes and well-being of the small-scale farming community.

Our project will contribute to these policy discussions primarily because our experimental analysis will be an important innovation in understanding the impact of contract farming on smallholder welfare.

Pastoralist households in the arid and semi-arid areas of northern Kenya are especially vulnerable to the risk posed by climate change. This risk-reduction strategy has the effect of keeping households poorer than they need to be.

Uninsured risk challenges the more than 3 million pastoralist households who live in northern Kenya’s arid and semi arid lands.

The IBLI Color Legend has five colors representing the level and trends of the IBLI insurance zones in Marsabit district in Northern Kenya.

An important aspect of this evaluation will explore whether or not the asset accumulation and productivity effects of insurance are sufficiently robust that they create a case for subsidizing insurance premiums as an alternative to cash transfers or food aid.

Unlike abstract questions about whether people might “like” to have insurance, the games put the actual product on the table with its market price attached.