Suchergebnisse

Examining the successes, failures, possibilities and limitations of efforts across rural Kenya, this book analyses the socioeconomic and institutional prerequisites for decentralization, and the role of community groups and producer organizations in reducing poverty and promoting empowerment

Index Based Livestock Insurance in the Arid and Semi-Arid Land (ASALs) of Northern Kenya and Southern Ethiopia is being implemented by the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), as a drought coping mechanism, anchored on the belief that development of an insurance scheme for livestock in a pastoral setting could be an effective risk-management strategy. The contracts are designed using low cost, accessible and reliable satellite data; Normalized Differenced Vegetation Index (NDVI). The payouts ensure that the animals are kept alive instead of providing payouts to replace / restock potentially dead animals. One of ILRI's commercial partners, Takaful Insurance of Africa (TIA) uses community shop agents in the distribution of the IBLI product. This approach is based on an agency model for providing financial services such as micro- insurance. Accurate, reliable and timely information, enable pastoralists to make better decisions on the kinds of feeds, animal health and marketing decisions; particularly where to sell and buy animals and negotiate better prices. Though ICT in developing countries have become a major means of disseminating information, both pastoralists and organisations working in the ASALs of Kenya have not yet fully taken advantage of the available cutting edge scientific techniques. This study therefore sought to understand how mobile technology through an agency model can be leveraged for crowd-sourcing and dissemination of information important for marketing livestock, livestock products and services. Key informant interviews and focused group discussions were carried out with the different actors from the private sector, public sector and the pastoralists. Isiolo County was chosen as the study site. Some of the key findings suggest that most efforts to use ICTs in collection and dissemination of information have failed in contexts that have no other support mechanisms around the pastoralist. Secondly, an agent in the form of drought monitors, food monitors, Community Animal Health Workers and Government administrators', are vital support to phone based approaches in collection and dissemination of information. Further investigations are needed to understand how these entities can be used to implement an effective ICT based market information system, leading to sustainable and food secure livelihoods in the ASALs.

Department for International Development, United Kingdom ; European Union ; United States Agency for International Development ; World Bank ; Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Australia ; Peer Review

Andrew G. Mude is an ILRI author ; There is a strong link between weather and the welfare of poor populations. Low-frequency, short-term, but catastrophic weather shocks can trigger destructive coping responses to disaster—for example, withdrawal of children from school, distress sale of assets, refugee migration, crime, and severe human suffering. Moreover, these adverse impacts often persist as children's physical growth falters, and household productivity, asset accumulation, and income growth are dampened (Dercon and Krishnan 2000; Hoddinott and Kinsey 2001; Hoddinott 2006). The prospect of such shocks may also induce underinvestment in assets at risk, limiting poor households' ability to grow their way out of poverty over time (Carter and Barrett 2006). The problem originates with the difficulty poor households face in insuring covariate risk. While informal social insurance arrangements and flexible credit contracts often provide the poor with significant insurance against household-specific, idiosyncratic risk, when entire communities or social networks confront the same biophysical shock, their capacity to buffer members' welfare may be insufficient to prevent severe and widespread human suffering. The magnitude and intensity of such suffering sometimes merits the label "famine" (Howe and Devereux 2004). External (domestic and international) relief organizations and governments commonly step in to provide emergency assistance in the wake of catastrophic covariate shocks such as drought, especially when the specter of famine looms. Operational agencies and the donor community are thereby financially exposed to catastrophic weather risks in developing countries via their humanitarian commitment to emergency response. In addition to their potential for other purposes (Barnett, Barrett and Skees forthcoming; Alderman and Haque 2007), recent innovations in index insurance show promise as a means to facilitate improved emergency response to weather-related catastrophic shocks that threaten famine. Just as improved early warning systems and emergency needs assessment practices have used timely monitoring and analysis of vulnerable areas to significantly improve humanitarian response in recent decades (Barrett and Maxwell 2005), so too can weather index insurance facilitate further improvement by addressing several key remaining weaknesses in global famine prevention efforts. This paper briefly outlines how donors and operational agencies might use weather index insurance for famine prevention, enumerates key prospective benefits from such products, and then illustrates the possibilities with an application to the arid lands of northern Kenya, an area of recurring severe droughts that elicit massive international humanitarian responses.