Motivation
Periodic droughts strike pastoralist households in Northern Kenya. These droughts can ruin more than 50% of household wealth and often lead to chronic and generational poverty. Digital financial services (DFS) have the potential to limit economic shocks from these droughts, especially for vulnerable women. Although graduation programs address chronic poverty, it is unclear whether the positive impacts on women’s lives generated by these programs can withstand persistent droughts. Access to insurance designed to protect women’s assets is a promising option for addressing this issue. Therefore, in 2018 the researchers launched a 5-year randomized controlled trial (RCT) to assess the integration of index-based livestock insurance (IBLI), a digitally-enabled insurance mechanism, into BOMA Project’s Rural Entrepreneur’s Access Project (REAP) in Samburu County, Kenya. Within the team’s research agenda, there are three components in consideration: altering poverty dynamics with hybrid asset building and protection, making digitally-enabled insurance available for women, and pathways of empowerment.
Objective
The research team plans to build upon their research to understand the long-term impacts of the REAP and IBLI programs as well as reveal any synergies between the two programs. The research design is structured to have randomized REAP and IBLI interventions with control and treatment components for each. REAP is implemented by a team of mentors who recruit participants in cohorts. Because a mentor may be working with cohorts at various stages in the program including those who have graduated, the research team has randomly selected participants across cohorts. Furthermore, using an encouragement design, IBLI premium discounts will be randomly assigned to a subset of participants. Finally, the team will test an innovative insurance contract focused on women’s responsibilities and concerns. This will be offered prior to the second endline survey to a subset of women in the sample. The details of the insurance contract are being determined by a workshop composed of implementers and participants from both programs.
