Pastoralists Receive Insurance Payouts

Sep 14 , 2019

Following extremely poor rains this year, 3,000 pastoralists in Borana, Oromia Regional State, received 4.9 million Br in insurance payouts from Oromia Insurance S.C. for the calamity of the drought. This year, the March – June rainy season, responsible for an average of 60pc of the annual rainfall in Borana , fell short, resulting in limited pasture regeneration and a perceptible decline in milk production and weight of animals. The pastoralists were given the payouts through the Index-Based Livestock Insurance (IBLI), a project led by the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and Oromia Insurance as a commercial partner. IBLI uses a satellite-based forage monitoring platform to inform the timing and extent of insurance payouts to individual pastoralist policy holders before the underlying “risk” – drought – happens. Insurance payments are effected when the estimated forage condition in an area fall below an agreed and pre-determined level of triggering threshold.