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Pioneering insurance for remote livestock herders taking hold in drought-prone areas of Kenya and Ethiopia

Sake Dabasso Halake with her recent livestock insurance payout, which was made in northern Kenya’s Marsabit District following the great drought that afflicted the Horn of Africa in the latter half of 2011 (photo credit: Jeff Haskins/Burness Communications).

Laurie Goering, a reporter for AlertNet writing from the United Nations climate change meetings in Durban this week, says that pioneering insurance projects are giving remote pastoral livestock herders a way to reduce the risks they face from a changing climate that presents recurring, dramatically severe, droughts.

‘Equipping illiterate migratory herders with drought insurance in one of the driest regions of drought-prone East Africa might seem a big task, particularly in a region where claims adjustors, cell phone coverage and cash to pay for policies are nearly as rare as rain itself.

‘But a range of such pioneering insurance efforts – considered one of the few ways to help East Africa’s herders weather worsening droughts – are taking hold in Kenya and Ethiopia, and are now being replicated as far away as Peru and Guatemala.

Read more …. ILRI clippings by Susan Macmillan, Dec 2011

One thought on “Pioneering insurance for remote livestock herders taking hold in drought-prone areas of Kenya and Ethiopia

  1. I find this – the clippings on IBLI very interesting since we in India are struggling with developing/establishing appropriate insurance scheme for livestock (other than dairy animals). I wonder if it is possible to get literature on IBLI and the experience with small stock and pastoralists.

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