46 PARTNERSH I PS ARC Ltd.’s commitment to protecting the livelihoods of farmers and pastoralists across our AfricanUnionmember stateswas recognised this year by the United States Government (USG), which chose to support our efforts through a landmark US$11.7 million partnership. Central to this partnership is strengthening food security across Africa by increasing access to parametric insurance to enable African governments to support climate resilience among their smallholder rain-fed farmers. This, in turn, builds their capacity to withstand non-climaterelated disruptions to agricultural supply chains. The first objective is to support and assist governments in effectively using parametric insurance. ARC Ltd. will work closely with them to customise risk models for each country, establish contingency plans and integrate parametric insurance into their policy frameworks. We will also continually refine and develop innovative products to meet the evolving needs of these countries. Through localisation, we can ensure that the insurance payouts meet the real needs on the ground. Secondly, the uptake of parametric insurance will be addressed through close cooperation with the African Union and regional economic communities to encourage adoption. The project is anchored in several continental and international disaster risk management (DRM) policy frameworks. The African Union Agenda 2063, the UN Sustainable Development Goals, the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, and the Sendai Framework all recognise the importance of disaster risk reduction. ARC Ltd. COO Ange Chitate is heading up the project, which will be rolled out over three financial years (FY23-FY26), with the funding enabling us to scale up technical assistance A LANDMARK US$11.7 MILLION PARTNERSHIP FOR FOOD SECURITY IN AFRICA in-country. “The priority is to expand our coverage to 19 states. The project strategically targets countries that currently lack ARCmemoranda of understanding, as we can only provide our services and offer risk pool participation once MoUs are signed,” Chitate explains. The countries are Benin, Burundi, Central African Republic, Chad, Comoros, Djibouti, Gabon, Ghana, Guinea, Lesotho, Liberia, Libya, Mozambique, Nigeria, Rwanda, São Tomé and Príncipe, Sierra Leone, Somalia and Uganda. Process and transparency ARC Ltd. will underwrite policies for both single and multiperil cover, having identified the countries that qualify for each. Monitoring during the season will be conducted jointly with participating countries to identify areas of high disaster risk and to calculate payouts based on the estimated impacts. This comprehensive monitoring also assists us with the refinement of the Africa RiskView (ARV) software and risk indicators while identifying gaps that need addressing. The intention is to add more data sets while our drought, flood and tropical cyclone models and insurance instruments will also be refined. Additionally, we will work extensively with our technical and financial partners, UN agencies, international financing institutions and universities to identify how ARV data can be used for increased evidence-based policy decisionmaking and impact measurement.
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