About 80% of Kenya’s land is arid or semi-arid lands (ASAL) with the main livelihoods being pastoral, agro-pastoral and subsistence agriculture. Farmers and herders in these areas, among the poorest in the country, suffer from a weak natural resource base in addition to weak institutions and infrastructure. In such cases droughts act as a covariate shock that erodes livestock assets making most households fall into poverty. Such situations leave the poor pastoralists with few available strategies to manage and cope with livestock losses.

To protect livestock keepers in the ASALs from drought-related asset losses, the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), in collaboration with a suite of partners, developed and implemented a market-mediated index-based insurance product. The Index Based Livestock Insurance (IBLI) is calculated by using a measure of pasture availability that is recorded by satellites, called the Normalized Differenced Vegetation Index (NDVI). This index is then used to predict the livestock mortality rate in specified divisions.

This poster, prepared for the Tropentag 2014 conference, shares findings from a study conducted in Kenya to understand the ‘why’ and ‘how’ of possible information and distribution channels which could be used for promoting and scaling up IBLI and ‘where’ and ‘what’ was the roles of certain respondents in the process of better adoption of IBLI.

This week, ILRI staff are participating in the Tropentag 2014 International Conference in Prague (17-19 September 2014). There is also a dedicated ‘ILRI@40’ side event on ‘Livestock-based options for sustainable food and nutritional security and healthy lives.’  See all the posters.