Kilimo Salama

Kilimo Salama (Safe Agriculture) offers micro-insurance designed for Kenyan farmers so that they can insure their farm inputs against drought and excess rain. The project, which is a partnership between The Syngenta Foundation for Sustainable Agriculture, UAP Insurance, and Safaricom, will offer insurance policies to farmers who plant on as little as one acre. Kilimo Salama shields farmers from significant financial losses when drought or excess rain are expected to wreak havoc on their harvests.

Most of the Kilimo Salama program is designed specifically for smallholder farmers. It uses automated weather stations and mobile payments to dramatically reduce administrative costs while enabling insurance premiums that millions of farmers can afford.

Kilimo Salama was designed from a pilot program in the Laikipia district of Kenya, where several hundred maize farmers insured their farm inputs against drought in the long rain season of 2009. Following the drought that season, weather stations showed that there was a payout and all farmers were compensated depending on the extent of the drought as measured at their weather station (a 30 percent and 80 percent payout, respectively). The pilot was the first of its kind in Kenya.

Publicly available: yes
Countries where available: Kenya