Across sub-Saharan Africa, small farmers are the bedrock of national and regional economies—unless the weather proves unpredictable and their crops fail. The solution proposed by Rose Goslinga is insurance, at a vast, continental scale, and at a very low, affordable cost. Rose Goslinga and the Syngenta Foundation for Sustainable Agriculture pioneered an unconventional way to give farmers whose crops fail early a second chance at a growing season.
Think
of microinsurance the way you think of microloans. The average farmer
insured in this way has a half-acre farm and pays just two Euros as
an annual premium. Rather than using farm visits to determine
damages, cloud data determines when payouts are due to farmers.
Building this program has taken the Syngenta Foundation six years and
has greatly tested their aptitude for creative problem-solving, from
figuring out how to get farmers to trust insurance companies to
creating technological solutions to help map which farmers are using
the product.