Kenya: Lessons Learned from Supporting the Implementation of Large-Scale Agriculture Insurance Program

As part of its strategic effort to address the impacts of drought, the government of Kenya (GoK) has worked cooperatively with partners to design, prepare, and implement large-scale agricultural insurance schemes as public-private partnerships. In response to GoK’s request for technical assistance to support this undertaking, the World Bank Group conducted a technical analysis of the fiscal implications and welfare benefits of various agriculture insurance options, which led to the identification of suitable products for targeted herders and farmers. Building on this technical analysis, Kenya’s Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries (‘the Ministry’) launched the Kenya Livestock Insurance Program (KLIP) in October 2015 to provide pasture drought insurance cover to vulnerable livestock herders in the arid and semi-arid lands of northern Kenya. In March 2016, a crop insurance program—the Kenya Agriculture Insurance and Risk Management Program—was launched to provide crop insurance, starting with area yield index insurance, to small-scale emerging maize and wheat farmers in selected counties of Kenya.

Disclaimer: our work in Kenya is generously supported by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the European Union (EU)-funded Africa Caribbean and Pacific-EU Africa Disaster Risk Financing Initiative, managed by the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery.