A Roadmap for Evidence-based Insurance Development for Nigeria’s Farmers

In 2014, Nigeria’s Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (FMARD) proposed a major expansion of agricultural insurance in the context of other reforms to the agricultural sector, and as part of the implementation of its National Agricultural Resilience Framework (NARF). This report is designed to inform development of inclusive insurance for Nigeria’s agriculture sector, and is offered as a contribution to the NARF. It is an outcome of a consultative process that began in September 2014 between FMARD and the CGIAR research program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS). By overcoming the problems of moral hazard, adverse selection, and resulting high transaction costs and processing delays that have plagued indemnity-based agricultural insurance, index-based insurance makes it feasible to insure millions of smallholder farmers.