Acre Africa

Context

In East Africa, agriculture employs up to 75% of the region’s population; most of them farming fewer than five hectares, often in remote areas. Many of these farmers are continuously faced with erratic weather patterns - mostly droughts and inconsistent rainfall - which prevents them from investing in their farms and threatens their livelihoods. In adverse seasons e.g. droughts, farmers can lose up to 100% of their harvest with no safety net.

Solution

• Acre Africa (the brand name of Agriculture and Climate Risk Enterprise Ltd. (ACRE)) links farmers to insurance products so that they can confidently invest in their farms. In 2014, 233’000 farmers across East Africa were insured through products Acre Africa had designed.
• Acre Africa is not an insurance company, but a service provider working with insurers and players within the agricultural insurance value chain, undertaking activities to facilitate access to insurance products for smallholder farmers.
• Acre Africa evolved from the Kilimo Salama project, started by the Syngenta Foundation and the GIIF, and plans to reach millions of Africa’s farmers.
• Acre Africa enables aggregators to cover the cost of providing the farmers insurance thereby enabling farmers to recover sums invested when a claim is made.

Impact depth

Acre Africa creates positive impact on two levels:

• At farm household level, affordable insurance enables and encourages smallholder farmers to invest in improving and increasing farm output.
• At farm level, Acre Africa mitigates the impact of potential losses due to weather-related risk e.g. drought or floods.