The World Bank is providing training in the area of agricultural risk management to various institutions in Ghana and Anglophone West Africa to equip them to identify opportunities and develop complementary products that help mitigate farmers\u2019 risks.
\nThe training programme aims to build the capacity of institutions in West Africa by providing the knowledge and skills required to design, price and implement agricultural index-based weather insurance programs.
\nIt is a key step to helping institutions to identify opportunities that they could tap into by developing financial products that would help limit the impact of bad weather on farmers\u2019 productivity and profit.
\nMalawi, Kenya, Ethiopia and Burkina Faso are some of the African countries piloting Index-based weather risk management programme.
\nGhana will also soon run a pilot agricultural insurance scheme with the support of German Technical Cooperation (GTZ).
\n\u201cBy sharing knowledge on index-based weather insurance with the West
\nAfrican insurance sector, the World Bank aims to improve the risk management capabilities of stakeholders in Africa working within agricultural supply chains,\u201d said Carlos Arce, Senior Economist of the Agricultural Risk Management Team.
\nHe said the weather posed a major risk to productivity and profit of farmers, making it difficult for them to access essential credit necessary to boost production and enhance earnings.
\n\u201cBe it floods or drought, particularly where they are severe, it could become catastrophic for the farmer,\u201d Mr Arce said.
\nHowever, agricultural insurance alone was not enough to solve the myriad of problems facing the agriculture sector, he noted.
\n\u201cInsurance as a financial product might not be suitable for all farmers but for specific farmers and in specific situations and is therefore not a silver bullet,\u201d Mr Arce said.
\nMr Arce said it was more important to provide farmers with good agricultural practices and services that allowed them to improve productivity and to mitigate their risks.
\nThe five-day training course in Designing Index-Based Weather Risk
\nManagement Programs is being delivered by the World Bank\u2019s Agricultural Risk Management Team (ARMT) and hosted by the National Insurance Commission (NIC).
\nAbout 50 participants from insurance companies, agricultural colleges, national meteorological departments and national insurance regulators from Ghana, Nigeria, Gambia, Liberia, and Sierra Leone are attending the meeting.
\nThe design and delivery of the training course has been funded by the European Union\u2019s All African Caribbean Pacific Agricultural Commodities Programme (AAACP).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The World Bank is providing training in the area of agricultural risk management to various institutions in Ghana and Anglophone West Africa to equip them to identify opportunities and develop complementary products that help mitigate farmers\u2019 risks. The training programme aims to build the capacity of institutions in West Africa by providing the knowledge and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-273628","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard"],"yoast_head":"\n