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.


Radar

LOFTY CONSTRUCTS

A painting depicts traditional farming equipment at the Science Museum around the Arat Kilo area. Since the seizing of power by the current administration, large-scale architectural projects marked by grandeur have proliferated across the capital. The satellite city being built in the Yeka mountains, which is set to cost around 600 billion Br, according to the Prime Minister, is one such project yet to see the light of day. Some estimates put the plot size for the project at around 503hct despit...


Radar

CLEAN BILL

A queue for diagnostics at the nation's largest state-owned hospital, Black Lion. As the health sector is largely funded by development partners from abroad, decreased support as donors shied away due to the war in the North has required the suspension of several new projects. Social health Insurance slated for next year was scraped due to a budgetary shortfall of five billion Birr. With the physician-to-patient ratio titering at around 1:30,000, queues in public hospitals are commonplace in Eth...


Radar

ACRID GROUNDS

A street vendor puts up pepper for sale around the Lideta area. With agricultural produce accounting for the largest share of the nation's GDP at around 40pc, setbacks in the delivery of fertilizer have become a source of strife in rural Ethiopia. Only a third of the scheduled fertilizer of 1.3 million quintals has been distributed into the hands of farmers this year. This is despite the year being one in which the government claims to have met local demand for wheat and started exporting. Low p...