Yemisi Izuora
Some international development agencies including the United Nations African Institute for Economic Development and Planning (IDEP), the African Risk Capacity (ARC), the International Finance Corporation (IFC), and the Association of African Insurance Supervisors (AAISA), have commenced a two-week training event on index and disaster risk insurance.
The training will help build the knowledge of African governments, the private sector, and the international community to better carry out financial planning necessary to protect vulnerable populations against climate shocks, disasters, and other crises.
Index and disaster risk insurance products help protect agribusinesses, farmers, and other low-income populations against environmental risks such as drought, floods, irregular rainfall, natural disasters and other effects of climate change. Access to these types of affordable insurance products will help the affected population mitigate the effects of these climate-related shocks, protecting them against catastrophic losses and unlocking access to finance.
The training workshops – offered in English the first week: from June 24 – 29; and in French the second week: June 30 – July 6, 2019 – will allow participants to discuss ways of exploiting their relative strengths to successfully implement these innovative types of insurance in their countries.
In his remarks, UN-ASG and Director-General, ARC, Mohamed Beavogui said, “Capacity building is key to our efforts in working with Member States. ARC and its partners work with Member States to provide development insurance instruments by determining risk profiles, customization of its tools, and development of a contingency plan that fits into a country’s broader risk management framework. This helps to strengthen resilience and protect development gains from being wiped away by weather-related risks.
Faheen Allibhoy, IFC Country Manager for Senegal, said: “The World Bank Group is committed to working with the African Union and UNECA to create new, sustainable agricultural and disaster risk insurance markets in Sub-Saharan Africa. Working together, we can achieve greater combined results that contribute to the development goals of all three institutions.”
One of the sponsors of the training, the African Institute for Economic Development and Planning (IDEP), is UNECA’s training institute. It is responsible for providing capacity development and training programs aimed at improving public sector management and development planning in support of member States’ structural transformation. Also, it contributes towards strengthening the capacity of member States to develop and adopt better approaches to development planning, economic policy formulation, management, monitoring and evaluation.
The training workshop in Dakar is the first of a series of activities that will be run jointly by the three institutions. Participants include representatives of ministries of agriculture and finance, insurance regulators, the media, as well as insurance companies offering (or planning to offer) index and disaster risk insurance in Sub-Saharan Africa, from Chad, Burkina Faso, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mauritania, Guinea, Niger, Senegal, Cote d’Ivoire, Kenya, Malawi, and Zimbabwe.