According to a statement, Kenya’s agriculture ministry has opened bids for crop insurance companies to protect more smallholder farmers from the risks and shocks of climate change as part of a government initiative.
According to the announcement, companies have until March 16 to request bids for the subsidized crop insurance program, which aims to expand the number of counties covered from 33 to 37. The third-largest economy in Sub-Saharan Africa has 47 provincial units.
Agriculture is the largest employer in Kenya, comprising a third of gross domestic product while farm exports are the biggest foreign-exchange earner.
The program is “part of a broader risk management framework that has been adopted by the government of Kenya as a key strategy to derisk the agriculture sector with a focus on the small-holder farmers,” according to the statement.
The country is very vulnerable to climate change with “projections suggesting that its temperature will rise up to 2.5 degrees Celsius between 2000 and 2050, while rainfall will become more intense and less predictable,” United Nations’s ReliefWeb said on its website. Even a modest rise in the frequency of droughts will prove a major challenge for food security and water availability.
