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This Literature Review is the rst step towards a comparative assessment of Weather Index Insurance (WII) in the agricultural sector in East and Southern Africa. The second step involves visits to four countries (Kenya, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, and Zambia) covered by the Climate Smart Agriculture Programme (Vuna) funded by DFID, which have weather index insurance programmes. The visits will allow collection of information on the recent performance of those programs and obtain the perceptions of key stakeholders on lessons learned, constraints, sustainability, and potential of those insurance programmes to address issues related to strengthening the resilience of agricultural systems to weather risk. The ndings from both stages will be summarised in an Evidence and Learning Report focussing on the determinants of success or failure of the programmes under implementation.

This paper summarizes the main ndings of the global experience on the implementation of WII specically the lessons learned on the mechanics of the index, pro tability, bundling, impacts, and potential role in climate change adaptation. It also discusses the challenges of current pilot projects in East and Southern Africa, wherever secondary information is available.

This paper presents a review of the commercial sustainability, profitability, challenges, impact, and potential contribution of weather index insurance (WII) products to improving resilience in weather-affected agricultural systems in developing countries. This is important given the continuing demand on governments to manage the considerable weather risk faced by smallholders in Sub-Saharan Africa and other weather-exposed regions in developing economies.

This assessment has been developed in a two-step process. First, a literature review was conducted summarising the global experience in developing weather index insurance programmes. Second, we conducted a field investigation designed to extract a more detailed understanding of whether the results of recently launched WII pilots in Sub-Saharan Africa (in Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe) are in line with the global experience.