Deadline: 23-Jul-21
The British Embassy Colombia has announced a call for bids to design and pilot an index-based weather insurance solution as part of the agricultural strand of the UK-Colombia Prosperity Programme (PP).
The pilot will complement and build on the climate risk activities that the PP has led in Colombia to address the challenge of insuring vulnerable smallholder farmers, allowing them to better manage climate risk, enabling investment and growth in the agricultural sector.
Objectives
- The Colombia Index-Based Cocoa Insurance Pilot (CIBCIP) will help to design a scalable and replicable farmer-driven index insurance product for defined climate risk. The pilot must be part of a holistic risk management solution to reduce the vulnerability of cocoa smallholder farmers to climate risks. It should explicitly target obstacles to help improve farmer income and use insurance as a tool to help increase productivity.
- The insurance pilot will be a farmer-driven design; it will also use robust scientific output and include international technologies and knowhow as drivers of innovation. It will also consider existing gaps among different groups of climate-vulnerable smallholder farmers- for example, female smallholders, those belonging to ethnic groups or young smallholders, and it will make an effort to adapt solutions that promote inclusion of these groups.
- The CIBCIP will build a robust weather-index correlating a specific climate risk with a negative income shock to design a comprehensive insurance ready for market uptake, highlighting features and finding mechanisms to reduce risk of low demand from insurance providers.
- The CIBCIP will enhance the capacity of vulnerable cocoa smallholder farmers and strategic cocoa supply chain actors to better manage climate risk, enabling investment and growth in the agricultural sector, aligned with the agri insurance Theory of Change (ToC) for the PP.
- The CIBCIP will build capacity of smallholder farmers and key supply chain actors to ensure that all partners understand, endorse and feed into the design of the pilot. It will also build trust to increase demand of index insurance in the cocoa sector. The pilot will need to demonstrate that it satisfies demand, that it solves the problem of managing risks in the cocoa sector, that it is operational in Colombia and that it has potential for success in the finance sector, allowing sustainability and scalability of the pilot.
- The CIBCIP will help to open the market to international companies with agri-tech and financial products and services. It will support companies to develop or reinforce, their commercial foothold in Colombia, enabling public and private sector partnerships, and creating or facilitating access from companies to commercial opportunities.
Funding Information
- The deadline for completion of all work is 30 March 2022 and the budget must not exceed £400,000.
Additional Information
- The grant recipient will be expected to provide interim products to the PP and Finagro for its review and guidance. Bidders are encouraged to include a timeline in their proposal that includes regular opportunities for feedback on draft reports and a phased approach to delivery.
- All work must be completed by 30 March, 2022. Bidders should include a realistic timeline in their proposals demonstrating ability to deliver against the Project’s objectives within this timeframe.
For more information, visit https://www.gov.uk/government/news/colombia-index-based-cocoa-insurance-pilot-cibcip-call-for-bids
