Five years ago, very few farmers were insuring their crops but currently, the numbers are increasing owing to the continued awareness being done together with the regulator Reserve Bank of Malawi (RBM).
Recommended Stories
Speaking during a roundtable discussion on up scaling integrated Climate and Disaster risk finance and insurance (CDRFI) approaches and dialogue on transparency and accountability of the initiatives in Dowa, Frank Gomani from the Insurance Association of Malawi acknowledged the uptake is however increasing at a very slow pace
In as far as crop insurance is concerned; the Association relies on farmers to give them the necessary information for the insurance companies to provide the necessary cover.
“Previously some five years ago, we started with only 500 farmers but then as at 2019, it’s increasing. This year that figure has tremendously increased but then in as far as Insurance Association of Malawi is concerned, we are not happy because say for example how many people are in Malawi?
“We are talking of about 20 million people and 70 percent maybe they are farmers but yet we’re only insuring a few. So figuratively we can say yes we are increasing we are moving forward, but at a very very slow pace. We need to insure each and every farmer.
”Some two years ago we can say maybe we are increasing on annual basis we are increasing maybe at 50 percent or so with 200,000 farmers currently insured.”
Gomani bemoaned the tendency by some of the farmers who when insuring crops, disregard good agricultural practices such as weeding, use of certified seeds and fertilizer application.
Currently, Malawi relies on weather stations to get the reliable data but due to collaboration with partners, they are able to provide technical cover with the help of satellite.
He stressed that the insurance companies need reliable data and farmers need to keep information on what they have realized year in year out to help in designing the cover on the weather or area yield index.
Department of Disaster management affairs (DoDMA) Deputy Director for Resilience Hastings Mwanjoka clarified during the interface that its role is to coordinate with different stakeholders and commended Civil society network on climate change (CISONECC) as one of the important partners in terms of advocacy.
Mwanjoka said the establishment of the Disaster Risk Management (DRM) Trust Fund is part of the 2023 DRM Act as it brings government and partners together pooling resources in implementing strategies agreed at national level.
“The new law is very important and very critical, it’s like now changing it’s a paradigm shift from the old law which has been repealed of 1991 which was focusing much on issues to do with response but the new law is bringing in now the diverse of understanding disasters where if we’re going to implement and to coordinate disasters, we need to look at issues of response, preparedness, recovery we need to think about issues of resilience”
