Climate-smart agri-insurance: Bundling agri-weather advisories with crop insurance in Mali

In Mali, climate change has a major influence on agricultural activities, leading to poor harvests and yield losses. Crop insurance can offer protection for farmers, however, insurance alone is not always sufficient for optimising their farming practices and improving their livelihoods. Furthermore, while insurance providers can in theory reach a lot of farmers, trust and uptake remains low.

A solution to this is to combine agro-insurance with climate services, to optimally inform farming decisions. Together with crop insurance provider OKO Finance, Weather Impact developed a bundled service for farmers in Mali, providing crop insurance as well as weather forecasts and agri-weather advisories via SMS. The goal is to increase uptake of agricultural and climate services through increased value, relevance, and trust.

In this contribution, we present a pilot study that ran between 2023 and 2025, reaching 1,500 farmers in Mali who used the bundled service for two growing seasons. Impact evaluations led by University of Göttingen showed strong positive effects, including higher maize yields, higher customers retention, more willingness to pay for the combined service, and a higher level of satisfaction from the farmers compared to insurance only.

Reduced harvest losses can help insurance provider OKO to reduce the premiums of their crop insurance, potentially reaching more farmers with a cheaper plan, improving their resilience to climate shocks. Weather Impact and OKO are currently working on scaling this service, aiming to reach more farmers with more tailored advice, enabling them in making climate-risk aware farming decisions.

In this contribution, we will share how we aimed to increase uptake of climate services in co-production with a local service provider, as well as lessons learned of piloting and operationalizing climate services in the agricultural sector in Mali.