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News & Features

News

Hands-on Academic Research Partnerships

“Of course, academic research can be theoretical - and theoretical research is quite important. But it is often conducted closely alongside interventions, intimately involved with on-the-ground dynamics, and brings significant value to local actors. This is something we see across the MRR Lab portfolio.”

Q&A: Hollard Mozambique Partnership with MRR Lab

Managing Director of Life & Agricultural Insurance, Israel Muchena shares Hollard Mozambique’s story of building an agricultural index insurance offering. A research team from the MRR Lab collaborated with Hollard to develop components of a successful product—from reaching last-mile customers through agrodealers to bundling the insurance with drought-tolerant seeds.

Q&A: Takaful Insurance of Africa Partnership with MRR Lab

Sumayya Hassan is CEO of Takaful Insurance of Africa, based in Nairobi, Kenya. In this Q&A, she discusses how theory and practice come together with two-way knowledge sharing in her company’s longstanding partnership with MRR Lab researchers. Impacts she credits to the partnership include expanded market reach, improved risk management, and enhanced brand image.

Understanding Women's Incentives Around an Agricultural Resilience Bundle

The MRR Lab project, Subsidizing Learning About Resilience-building Agricultural Technologies in Mozambique tests how learning supports sustained adoption of a resilience-building bundle of drought-tolerant maize seeds and index insurance. Although men tend to be the primary decision makers around crop choice and inputs, women’s role in providing agricultural labor makes their buy-in important to the decision to adopt.

MRR Innovation Lab Presents at COP28

On December 10, the MRR Innovation Lab co-led a session at Resilience Hub at COP28 in Dubai. The event was entitled “Supporting Innovation to Build Food System Resilience Across Landscapes and Waterscapes.” Speakers included:

Q&A: Agricultural Credit, Insurance, and Climate Change

MRR researcher Khushbu Mishra reflects on climate change – how farmers experience it, its implications for structuring agricultural insurance, and what it means for farmers’ attitudes toward risk.

Q&A: Investigating Gender-responsive Learning in Mozambique

We recently sat down with Rachel Jones, a 4th year development economics graduate student at the University of California, Davis. Jones is integrating additional research questions within an existing MRR Lab project to better understand the interplay of gender, household dynamics, and learning preferences among farmers in Mozambique.