Why women are among the best clients for livestock insurance in East Africa
A recent CTA workshop on ‘making next-generation ACP agriculture work for women’ identified seven critical success factors to enable women to truly benefit from agriculture: access by women to investment and finance, access to markets, skills support, networking and capacity development, access to information, knowledge and technology, access to land, overcoming socio-cultural factors, and appropriate recognition of women (in society, in policies, through targeted delivery of services).
A story from the workshop by Rupsha Banerjee, Eric Mwaura and Sabdiyo Dido asks why women pastoralists in East Africa – who are not usually significant livestock owners – are major customers for IBLI’s livestock insurance product. Reasons suggested include that women’s access to micro-loans enables them to access a financial service such as IBLI, women do own small ruminants so have an interest in insurance, and increasing sedentarisation of the pastoral community which means that women are becoming household decision-makers.
As initiatives such as IBLI are being scaled out across East Africa, it is essential to develop a deeper understanding of the factors that motivate livestock owners – both women and men – to invest in such insurance.
Watch an interview with Rupsha:
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