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R4 Rural Resilience Initiative Annual Report: January - March 2019

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The R4 Rural Resilience Initiative (R4) is a strategic partnership between Oxfam America (OA) and the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP). R4 was initiated in 2011 to respond to the challenges faced by food insecure communities enduring increasingly frequent and intense climate disasters and other shocks. The program builds on the initial success of HARITA (Horn of Africa Risk Transfer for Adaptation), an integrated risk management framework developed by Oxfam America, the Relief Society of Tigray (REST), Ethiopian farmers and several other national and global partners. R4 refers to the four risk management strategies integrated in the project to strengthen farmers’ food and income security. The initiative combines improved natural resource management through asset creation or improved agricultural practices (risk reduction), microinsurance (risk transfer), increased investment, livelihoods diversification and microcredit (prudent risk taking), and savings (risk reserves).

The initiative is implemented in Ethiopia, Senegal, Malawi, Zambia, Kenya and Zimbabwe reaching over 87,000 farmers, (benefitting around 545,000 people). In addition, nearly 6,000 non-R4 farmers have accessed insurance products developed by the R4 initiative, either delivered through non-WFP programmes or by paying their insurance premium fully in cash.

During this quarter, the initiative focused on commencing activities in each of the R4 countries. Following dry spells during the 2018 agricultural season, the indexes were triggered in Ethiopia and Senegal. In Kenya, assessment of farmers’ average yields took place in January to analyse the level of payouts for the 2018 short rains season. In Zambia, the index triggered and payouts will be disbursed during the following quarter. In Malawi, the R4 team focused on monitoring of interventions and planning activities for 2019. In Zimbabwe, an outcome monitoring exercise was conducted to determine the effects of the initiative on household resilience. Results from the survey will be presented in the next Quarterly Report.