Assessment of agriculture insurance linked to contract farming and government input subsidy scheme in Zambia

What we offer
At the core of our work, impact evaluations are rigorous studies that measure the effects of international development programmes. We focus on conducting impact evaluations on policy-relevant research questions where credible findings can drive decision-making.

3ie invented evidence gap maps, which provide a visual overview of existing and ongoing studies or reviews in a sector or sub-sector of international development. These maps help policymakers find the most relevant evidence for a given question, thereby improving decision-making.

Our synthesis products, including systematic reviews, integrate findings from multiple different studies which address a common research question. Because they look systematically across the evidence base to see what works and why, systematic reviews and other synthesis products are more reliable for decision-making than results from a single study used in an ad hoc way.

Often, policy decisions must be made quickly. To make sure that decision-makers get the evidence they need when they need it, 3ie has developed a set of helpdesk services and rapid evidence products. Our Rapid Response Briefs and Rapid Evidence Assessments draw from the latest high-quality research to answer policy questions in a fraction of the time of traditional evaluations or systematic reviews.

We work with governments and other organizations to build their capacities in evaluation and evidence-informed decision-making. In addition to providing trainings on a wide range of evaluation methods, we offer ongoing support services to ensure our partners have access to the most up-to-date evidence and evaluation tools.

3ie specialises in increasing access to, demand for and use of evidence by governments, parliaments, programme managers, civil society, programme participants and the media. We do this by emphasising the value of planning and engaging with stakeholders to ensure that evaluations and reviews are relevant and useful. We use robust and effective monitoring to measure evidence use so that we can convey evidence impact on programmes and policies with greater confidence.

Since 3ie was founded, transparency, reproducibility, and ethics (TRE) have been core considerations in our work. We have developed and refined tools and best practices to ensure our studies apply technically rigorous methodologies, transparently share design and analysis decisions, yield computationally reproducible analysis, and incorporate foundational principles of research ethics into design, implementation, and dissemination. 3ie’s Transparency, Reproducibility, and Ethics (TRE) Policy articulates this commitment to TRE best practices.
Evidence hub
3ie’s Development Evidence Portal is the largest-of-its-kind repository of rigorous evidence on what works in international development. This portal includes evaluations and synthesis of studies conducted in low-and middle-income countries. It combines records from 3ie’s Impact Evaluation and Systematic Review repositories, as well as, evidence gap maps.

These provide a visual display of completed and ongoing systematic reviews and impact evaluations in a sector or sub-sector, structured around a framework of interventions and outcomes.

Evidence impact summaries briefly describe how 3ie-supported evidence has informed and influenced decision makers. Each summary highlights verified instances of evidence impact.

We provide funding for replications, conduct in-house replication research and publish guidance on replication methodology. We also provide funding to original authors of 3ie-funded for preparing their raw datasets.

As part of our mandate as a knowledge producer and translator for our main audiences, we publish a range of knowledge products. These include briefs, impact evaluation reports, systematic review reports and summaries, replication papers, evidence gap map reports, scoping reports and working papers.

3ie’s Registry for International Development Impact Evaluations (RIDIE) aims to enhance the transparency and quality of impact evaluation research before it begins.
Our work
- Working with goverments
3ie’s evidence programmes support studies to fill critical knowledge gaps in a sector, sub-sector or in an area with limited rigorous evidence. We fund studies under a specific theme or which address a particular question or set of questions in programme areas where our donors want to expand global public knowledge of what works and what does not.

Improving adolescent sexual and reproductive health requires decision-makers to have evidence on what works or not, for whom and why, particularly in low- and middle-income countries (L&MIC).

Despite the availability of agricultural technologies, few smallholder farmers in developing economies adopt new inputs and practices. One of the factors preventing this is the lack of effective knowledge dissemination.

Agriculture is a major source of sustenance for rural populations in low- and middle income countries. But owing to weather, pests, diseases and price fluctuations, farmers face numerous risks, including crop and livestock losses.

The production and consumption of fish, a nutritious source of food for around one billion people, is rising globally. The bulk of aquaculture still originates from small-scale farming in developing countries, such as Bangladesh.

According to the United Nations estimates, 103 million youth worldwide lack basic literacy skills, and more than 60 per cent of them are women.

3ie, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, is supporting studies and other work on HIV combination prevention to maximize the useful knowledge and policy implications from these interventions.

To gain a better understanding of whether providing HIV self-tests to people would increase HIV testing rates, and who might benefit most from availability of tests, 3ie funded seven pilot interventions and their impact evaluations in Kenya, Uganda and Zambia.

The Saamuhika Shakti or Collective Impact initiative aims to improve the lives of waste pickers in Bengaluru, in India’s southern state of Karnataka, through a coordinated multi-sectoral approach.

We are supporting the generation of rigorous evidence in humanitarian contexts on interventions related to water, sanitation and hygiene, food security, multi-sectoral humanitarian programming and interventions targeting malnutrition.

In alignment with our mission, 3ie promotes rigorous, efficient, and ethical use of innovative data sources for impact evaluations, including in those conducted by 3ie, by 3ie research partners, and in the global development community more broadly.

A major challenge in the fight against vaccine-preventable deaths and diseases is the limited evidence available on innovative and successful community-based approaches for expanding immunization coverage in countries with low or stagnating vaccination rates.

Much of the evidence surrounding the integration of HIV services with maternal, neonatal, and child health services, as well as with sexual and reproductive health and family planning services, does not come from rigorous studies.

3ie, the World Health Organization and the Partnership for Maternal Newborn & Child Health worked together to create a gap map to assess the evidence available on social, behavioural and community engagement interventions related to reproductive, maternal, newborn and child health programs in low and middle-income countries.

Everyone needs reliable access to a sufficient quantity of affordable, nutritious food. However, all too often, this need is not fulfilled. Despite best efforts, significant gaps persist between global nutrition targets and actual achievements.

Fragility has expensive, long-term consequences and trying to build peace in situations of protracted conflicts is becoming the norm. In 2016, 1.8 billion people – nearly a quarter of the world's population – were living in situations of fragility. Social cohesion is widely considered important in building sustainable peace in fragile contexts.

Safe sanitation is a key determinant of many public health outcomes and ending open defecation is necessary in order to achieve safe sanitation. To this end, the Indian government has led a massive sanitation program, Swachh Bharat Abhiyan - Gramin, to improve latrine access and use.

Launched in 2011, the National Rural Livelihoods Mission (NRLM) aims to link the rural poor in India to sustainable livelihood opportunities and financial services.

We set up our Replication Programme to address the need for a freely available global public good that helps improve the quality and reliability of impact evaluation evidence used for development decision-making. Replication is the most established method of research validation in science, yet it has not been fully embraced by the research community or development donors, leading to this gap.

The natural resource governance sector is under-researched and programs in it are under-evaluated. 3ie supported seven impact evaluations to fill critical knowledge gaps on what works to improve governance in the extractives sector in low- and middle-income countries.

Launched in 2011, the National Rural Livelihoods Mission (NRLM) aims to link the rural poor in India to sustainable livelihood opportunities and financial services.

3ie, in partnership with the Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council (WSSCC), developed this program to build the evidence base in L&MICs and to support global efforts towards increasing equitable access to and use of WASH services.

We support impact evaluations to build the evidence base on the effectiveness of interventions that reduce the risks faced by the poor through participation in public works and employment programmes.

India has one of the lowest female labor force participation rates in South Asia. Among rural women, less than 30 per cent are engaged in productive work, paid or unpaid.

It is widely recognized that preventive measures are crucial in tackling the HIV epidemic in Sub-Saharan Africa. Three randomized controlled trials and numerous observational studies have shown that male circumcision reduces HIV acquisition by approximately 60 per cent for men, suggesting that efforts to increase male circumcision can play a significant role in HIV prevention.

3ie champions the research transparency and reproducibility movement as a means of understanding and mitigating challenges to the credibility of social science research, while also working toward stronger integration of ethical principles into practice.

.

3ie, in partnership with the Philippines National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) and Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, is implementing a multi-year Philippines Evidence Program (also known as Policy Window Philippines).

Working in collaboration with the Office of the Prime Minister, the primary aim is to improve developmental outcomes through evidence-informed decision making in Uganda. 3ie is currently supporting evaluation of government programmes around youth livelihood, family planning, public service delivery and local governance, and universal primary education.

3ie and the government of Benin are working on a a multi-year regional initiative that aims to promote the institutionalization of evaluation in government systems across eight countries in West Africa, including: Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Niger, Senegal and Togo.
Funding
- Open opportunities
View our current funding opportunities for evaluations, systematic reviews and internal replication studies.

Publication Type: Other evaluations

Country: Zambia

3ie evidence programme: Agricultural Insurance Evidence Programme
Author(s): Nancy McCarthy, Agrotosh Mookerjee, Ulrich Hess, Saskia Kuhn
Institutional affiliation(s): LEAD Analytics, Risk Shield Consultants, GIZ, GIZ
Grant-holding institution: LEAD Analytics
Main implementing agency: LEAD Analytics
Sex disaggregation: No
Gender analysis: No
Equity focus: Yes
Study type: Process evaluation

Context

In Zambia, only 16 per cent of smallholder famers’ households had access to irrigation and the rest are dependent on rainfed agriculture. Despite undertaking measures to reduce potential losses, weather shocks are the major cause for farm households’ losses to both crop production and overall income. For the 2016–2017 season, an insurance product was available for all 46,346 farmers who typically contract with NWK, a cotton agro-processor in Zambia , but only 4,338 signed up.This study explores the feasibility and acceptability of a successfully marketed strategy of combined insurance package that included weather index-based crop insurance.

Intervention design

This study assessed the feasibility and acceptability of weather index-based insurance (WII) products. Smallholder cotton farmers sign up voluntarily for the insurance coverage at the beginning of the season, when they also receive their input packages from NWK.

The intervention encompasses two phases. During phase 1, the team focused on developing an ‘encouragement’ design to be implemented in Phase 2. In this phase, a review of the literature was conducted to identify lessons learned by other WII projects and an analysis of a rural household dataset to understand current exposure to weather risks, and current risk management and coping strategies. Marketing and outreach activities were implemented to obtain information on farmers’ comprehension of the insurance product and inform dissemination strategies. Outreach activities included training, using videos, posters and other literature with local shed managers, and periodically touching base with farmers via SMS messages.

During phase 2 of the intervention, the WII product was marketed to smallholder cotton growers.

The study hypothesised farmer encouragement activities with outreach and dissemination strategies would increase the uptake of WII. This hypothesis was based on the primary assumption:

Generate a sufficient amount of information that will generate an effective encouragement design.

Evaluation design and methodology

This was a mixed-methods study conducted in Southern, Central, Eastern, and Copperbelt provinces in Zambia. For the quantitative component, nationally representative administrative data from the Rural Agricultural Livelihood Survey were analysed. Qualitative methods included two rounds of focus group discussions and key informant interviews.

Primary evaluation questions

The study addressed the following questions:

Can current training materials be improved to increase farmers’ attention to, and comprehension of, the WII product?
What mechanisms and/or materials are effective at addressing some of the key barriers thought to hinder adoption of WII products, such as lack of trust of the insurer, concerns with basis risk and lack of experience with the real value of payouts on the part of the farmers?
How often should farmers be contacted throughout the year, and via what mechanisms?

Primary findings

Very few risk management or risk coping mechanisms are effective at mitigating the impacts of rainfall shocks, therefore there is ample scope to develop a WII product that complements existing risk management and coping mechanisms. The team also found that more educated farm households are more likely to invest in sustainable land management techniques and to have access to a wider range of risk-coping mechanisms.

Farmers stressed the need to make outreach materials available in local languages. Also, they reported that farmers stressed the need for more contact throughout the year to maintain a comprehension of the WII product and to sustain interest. While many participants had attended training on the WII product, the comprehension was often limited many months after the training.

Comprehension was quite good when testing farmers about half an hour after the introductory presentation.

Implications

Given the study findings, the training, outreach and marketing strategies can be developed and refined to increase uptake of the WII product by smallholder cotton farmers in rural Zambia.

The research team found that farmers are interested in WII products in general, but that information on the WII product can be more effective and consistently provided through a wide variety of mechanisms.