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R4 Rural Resilience Initiative Quarterly Report, October - December 2019

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The R4 Rural Resilience Initiative (R4) began as a strategic partnership between the World Food Programme (WFP) and Oxfam America in 2011 to build on the success of Oxfam America’s pilot project HARITA (Horn of Africa Risk Transfer for Adaptation) that broke new ground in the field of rural risk management. After the successful expansion of the R4 integrated approach under the global partnership, in October 2018, Oxfam America transitioned into an advisory role with WFP taking the lead on the management and scale-up of R4 operations, globally. WFP gratefully acknowledges the pioneering role Oxfam America played together with the communities, the Relief Society of Tigray (REST) and other local and international actors in creating, developing and transferring the HARITA model outside Ethiopia. R4 is comprised of four integrated risk management strategies that 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, Zimbabwe, and Burkina Faso, and will be piloted in Mozambique this year. R4 reached over 93,000 farmers, (60 percent women) in 2019. Of these farmers, over 5,000 accessed insurance products developed by the R4 initiative, either delivered through non-WFP programmes or by paying their insurance premium fully in cash.

During the final quarter of 2019, the initiative focused on finalizing insurance enrolments in Malawi, Zambia, Zimbabwe, and Kenya. In Ethiopia, the initiative reached over 28,000 farmers (42 percent women) with weather index insurance.
Moreover, under the Satellite Index Insurance for Pastoralists in Ethiopia (SIIPE), 7,816 pastoralists accessed index-based livestock insurance in the Somali region of Ethiopia. In Senegal, a total of 8,206 farmers (52 percent women) were insured for the 2019 agricultural season. In 2019, R4 expanded into Burkina Faso, where the initiative insured 702 farmers (53 percent women). 2019 also marked the expansion of R4 to Mozambique, where in 2020 the initiative will pilot interventions in Tete, Gaza, Nampula and Zambezia provinces. During this quarter, Mozambique’s first Green Climate Fund (GCF) proposal for the expansion of R4 in the country was approved during the 24th Meeting of the GCF Board in Songdo.