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The African Risk Capacity (ARC) and three other international development agencies are hosting a two-week training on index and disaster risk insurance in Dakar, Senegal. The first week of the workshop, June 24-29, will be done in English, while the second week, June 30-July 6, will be offered in French.

Index and disaster risk insurance products help to protect agribusinesses, farmers and low-income populations against environmental risks such as droughts, floods, irregular rainfall, natural disasters and other effects of climate change. According to the ARC, access to these types of affordable insurance products will help the affected populations to mitigate the effects of climate-related shocks, thereby, protecting them against catastrophic losses and unlocking access to finance.

The African Institute for Economic Development and Planning (IDEP), one of the sponsors of the training, is the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa’s training institute. The International Finance Corporation (IFC) and the Association of African Insurance Supervisors (AASIA) are the other co-organizers.

According to a statement jointly released by the organizers, the training will help to build the knowledge of African governments, the private sector and the international community to carry out better financial planning necessary for protecting vulnerable populations against climate shocks, disasters and other crises. They noted that this workshop is the first in a series of activities that will be jointly run by them.

“Capacity building is key to our efforts in working with member states”, Mohamed Beavogui, Director-General of ARC, said. “ARC and its partners work with member states to provide development insurance instruments by determining risk profiles, customization of its tools and development of a contingency plan that fits into a country’s broader risk management framework. This helps to strengthen resilience and protect development gains from being wiped away by weather-related risks.”

Beavogui, who is also a UN Assistant Secretary-General, added that the training workshop will allow participants to discuss ways of exploiting their relative strengths to successfully implement these innovative insurance schemes in their countries.

The workshop is expected to convene representatives of ministries of agriculture and finance, insurance regulators, the media, as well as insurance companies offering or planning to offer index and disaster risk insurance in Sub-Saharan Africa.

“The World Bank Group is committed to working with the African Union and UNECA to create new, sustainable agricultural and disaster risk insurance markets in Sub-Saharan Africa,” said Faheen Allibhoy, IFC’s Country Manager for Senegal. “By working together, we can achieve greater combined results that contribute to the development goals of all three institutions.”

The ARC consists of the ARC Agency and the ARC Insurance Company. Established in 2012 as a specialized agency of the African Union, the ARC Agency helps AU member-states to improve their capacity to better plan, prepare and respond to weather-related disasters. The ARC Insurance Company, however, is a mutual insurance facility that provides risk transfer services to member-states through risk pooling and access to reinsurance markets. The United Kingdom Department of International Development and the German KfW Development Bank are capital contributors to the ARC Insurance Company.