“Agriculture is more likely than other sectors to offer multiple opportunities for women's empowerment. However, women farmers generally have less access to savings and credit than their male counterparts. On the other hand, insurance is an important tool that allows smallholder women farmers to build resilience, transfer risk and promote sustainable farm-level investments.
Strengthening rural poor women's resilience - their ability to cope with and recover from shocks - is an important part of Pula's work. With support from ADFI and other development partners, we are identifying gender gaps in access to agricultural insurance and credit and developing innovative, affordable solutions to empower the most vulnerable women farmers in Africa.”
Rose Goslinga, President, Pula Advisors
In January 2021, the African Development Bank, the Africa Digital Financial Inclusion Facility (ADFI) and Pula Advisors, signed the agreement for a USD 1 million initiative to support women smallholder farmers to develop greater resilience and improve crop production in Kenya, Nigeria and Zambia.
This initiative supports the scaling of existing technology that Pula has tested, as well as the development of new technology innovations tailored to women’s needs. The project will leverage Pula's extensive data, including that from satellite technology, combined with market insights and direct interactions with women.
ADFI and Pula are working on gathering the insights emerging from the above workstreams to then share as valuable learning for scaling digital financial solutions for farmers in Africa and women smallholder farmers in particular.
This research exercise aimed to uncover the extent of the gender gap in awareness and take-up of agricultural insurance, how agricultural insurance should be bundled to meet women smallholder farmers’ needs and the types of socio-cultural barriers that insurance products would need to overcome.
VIDEO: Hear the perspective from women smallholder farmers in Zambia on how this initiative is contributing to mitigating risks in their crop production and improving their economic resilience.
WEBINAR: ADFI hosted a webinar in September 2022, with high attendance and interactivity, which demonstrated the importance of sharing learning and knowledge from initiatives that support women smallholder farmers to boost and protect their yields through digital microinsurance and agricultural data services.
The second in the series, the session featured valuable insights from senior experts from the African Development Bank, the Africa Digital Financial Inclusion Facility (ADFI), the Ministry of Community Development and Social Services of Zambia and Pula Advisors.
LINK TO WEBINAR RECORDING - please use passcode: +59$x=gp
For more information on the project, see here
