THE Insurance and Pensions Commission (Ipec) and the International Finance Corporation (IFC) have launched the agricultural index-based insurance project to provide insurance solutions for smallholder farmers who are vulnerable to climate-related crop losses in Zimbabwe.

is follows the signing of a partnership agreement between Ipec and IFC in February this year under the banner “Agriculture Insurance Support Project”.

e project was launched virtually and was attended by various stakeholders, including government ministries, insurers, Meteorological Services Department, developmental organisations, representatives from the agricultural value chain.

In her welcoming remarks, Ipec Commissioner Grace Muradzikwa, said while the agricultural sector faced uncertainty due to climate change, the uptake of agricultural insurance was relatively low.

Some of the factors behind this are unaffordability of existing agricultural insurance products, inappropriate products, low levels of awareness on the role of insurance by farmers, especially smallholder farmers and lack of trust between insurers and farmers.

“Notwithstanding these factors, the reality is that climate change can no longer be ignored,”