FieldSense Advise, 2021
Improved awareness and understanding of agriculture insurance among women farmers
Team
Innovation Ops Manager
Agronomy Analyst
Data Analyst
Product Designer
My Role
Stakeholder Management
Product Owner
Service Design
Information Architecture
User Research
Duration
3 years
Background
Based on Pula’s Business-to-Government (B2G) approach, smallholder farmers that get insured as part of Government Farmer Programmes are normally unaware of the fact that they are protected. In cases where they are aware they lack access to information on how the insurance product works.
Problem Statement
On average, we noticed that 35% of new farmers that we have engaged are aware that agriculture insurance exists within their programme. More so, less than 20% of both new and repeat farmers in these markets understood how Area Yield Index Insurance works.
Sneak Peak
Process
Based on funding from Africa Development bank (AfDB) to address the challenges female farmers in Zambia, Nigeria, and Kenya markets with accessing micro-insurance products as part of Africa Digital Financial Inclusion Fund (ADFI).
Research
Research highlighted that women farmers in these markets faced a number of barriers accessing digital financial tools. Most notably, these include lower digital and financial literacy, lack of training and awareness of insurance services, difficulty in accessing information on insurance products and services, and lack of capital. In addition, we noted that some women in these markets are hindered by social norms that limit decision-making and interaction outside the home.
Ideation
With FieldSense, noted as one of the products that could help lower the barriers. We looked to improve the value proposition provided by the product to clients and donors. Molding it into an Education & Marketing Product/Service with two (2) key offerings:
Insurance Awareness & Education
Farmer Mobilization
Ensuring that from the communication channels picked would be “feature-phone” friendly - whilst also not deviating from the tools they use in their everyday life.
Utilizing Insurance Awareness & Education campaign capability to tackle barriers female farmers faced. To do so, we picked out different channels of communication to tackle the different markets, namely:
Zambia - SMS, Female-focused Farmer Groups, Interactive Voice Recordings (IVR), Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD), & Radio
Kenya - SMS & Interactive Voice Recordings (IVR)
Nigeria - SMS, Female-focused Farmer Groups, & Whatsapp
There were a few tools that were outliers to these parameters, these were:
Female-focused farmer groups - this communication option looked to address a big question that remained - How might we address social norms some of these women farmers faced in their day to day life that limited their access to information? An example of such a social norm noted in Nigeria was that in most cases, their mobile phones were not always with them, but with their husbands or children who sometimes helped convey any information sent to them through the mobile phones.
How did we measure success?
Based on the seasonality of crop seasons, we broke down a structure that best captured the knowledge building effect of our interventions. To do so, we looked to capture initial product literacy at the beginning of the crop season and utilize a comparative analysis at the end of the crop season. Enabling us to capture the campaign’s impact.
In order to capture a representative sample from a programme that would range between ~10k to ~600k farmers in a single market. We utilized a sample size with a 5% margin of error and a 95% confidence level based on the population size.
The study tested farmers on two broad categories: Insurance Awareness and Insurance Knowledge. These metrics were broken down as follows:
Insurance Awareness metrics
Spontaneous & Aided awareness
Insurance Education metrics
Which covered key aspects tied to understanding the Insurance product from a farmer’s perspective: Risks covered, Risks not covered, Nature of cover, Agro-Ecological Zone concept, time for CCEs, CCE sample size, value of payout.
Final Outcome
Findings
Need to sensitize Agricultural Officers and Agro dealers as well - We noted that the first point of contact farmers have to get clarity or check in regarding the program is always Agricultural Officers (i.e. Ward Agricultural Officers, Camp Extension Officers). To ensure that they were well equipped to tackle any Insurance based questions farmers may have. We looked to provide Insurance knowledge to Agricultural Officers and Agro dealers. With the aim being to tackle product misconceptions such as some trainer of trainers believing the insurance product is Yield based rather than it being input-based.
Need to diversify from only digital approaches to improve farmers knowledge on insurance - This addresses the fact that some women in these emerging markets at times did not have access to their mobile phones - therefore, we could not 100% rely on all the Insurance information getting to them solely through digital means. Therefore we looked into alternatives that also worked well with instances of low social mobility (based on the finding that some women farmers needed to get permission to leave home).
Final Design
To help tackle the barriers female farmers in Kenya, Nigeria, and Zambia face regarding lack of training, awareness, and access to information on insurance products and services we structured a Hybrid methodology, which included the use of Digital and Human Engagement methods.
An example of a service blueprint designed.
Impact
In Sub-Saharan Africa,
boosting awareness to 84% among 742,000 farmers by end of 2023.
Article on Africa Development Bank (AfDB) Website, highlighting the results of the following efforts to female farmers in Zambia (click here to view article and video)
Screenshot of ADFI Webinar II - I had the pleasure to share findings on mid-term knowledge and learning tied to Pula’s Digital Implementation end to Senior experts and Practitioners from the African Development Bank, the Africa Digital Financial Inclusion Facility (ADFI), the Ministry of Community Development and Social Services. Adding up to over 100 participants.