Insuring against hard times ahead with index-based livestock insurance.
Dambi Dida’s four daughters walk 8km to school together every day. With rucksacks full of stationery and notebooks, and a breakfast of porridge and milk, they are ready for a day of learning.
Life hasn’t always been this good. In the past 25 years, drought has hit the Borana zone repeatedly, making life extremely challenging for pastoralists like Dambi and his family, who rely on the income from livestock sales and milk from goats to survive. Dambi grew up nearby, his father was a pastoralist, as was his grandfather. He learnt that the life of a pastoralist was not easy, but when he was a child, drought was not common. As he got older, however, the rains came less and less, and after five successive droughts, all but a handful of Dambi’s livestock had perished. Nothing was left for his family. “Drought is worse than war”, says Dambi, reflecting on the past 25 years…
