Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/179062 
Year of Publication: 
2015
Citation: 
[Journal:] Agricultural and Food Economics [ISSN:] 2193-7532 [Volume:] 3 [Publisher:] Springer [Place:] Heidelberg [Year:] 2015 [Pages:] 1-21
Publisher: 
Springer, Heidelberg
Abstract: 
This paper reviews recent advances in, and challenges for, weather index insurance for managing drought risk in smallholder agriculture, with a focus on sub-Saharan Africa. Despite its promise to integrate local agricultural risk smoothing with insurance principles, there remain many challenges to its mainstreaming in low income countries. Scaling up of weather index insurance pilot projects is particularly constrained by high-basis risk, related to the divergence between the calculated weather index and actual productivity loss on the farm. Various options may be considered to enhance uptake of weather index insurance. Linking reliable weather data with location-specific crop and agronomic conditions using flexible geospatial crop modeling tools is one option to reduce the basis risk. The other option is interlinking weather index insurance with credit or safety nets. In the end, insurance should be offered as part of a wider set of business services that provide real value to smallholders. Finally, the review acknowledges that the suggested conceptual solutions, especially interlinking index based weather insurance with credit will require more empirical evidence on the extent to which insurance would reduce the cost of borrowing and make credit more accessible to the smallholder farmers.
Subjects: 
Index-based weather insurance
Inter-linkage
Credit
Safety net
Sub-Saharan Africa
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Creative Commons License: 
cc-by Logo
Document Type: 
Article

Files in This Item:
File
Size





Items in EconStor are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.