The R4 Rural Resilience Initiative

Smallholder farmers are being significantly impacted by climate change, which is aggravating key structural challenges such as poor access to agricultural inputs, financial services, and assets.

R4 aims to support smallholder farmers in becoming more resilient to climate risks through a combination of four integrated objectives: 

• reducing the impact of climate shocks through nature-based solutions and improved agricultural practices, productive asset creation and climate information services; 
• transferring the risk of potentially catastrophic climate events to the private insurance market; 
• enabling better risk absorption of households and communities through the promotion of group savings and integration with social protection systems;
• promoting prudent risk-taking through financial education, livelihood diversification, and easier access to credit to enable better investments.

In 2022, R4 Rural Resilience continued expansion in collaboration with the WFP Innovation Accelerator, including the provision of microinsurance to smallholder cocoa farmers in West Africa. R4 Rural Resilience conducted feasibility studies to design and implement an integrated and sustainable microinsurance scheme in the new value chain. The first phase of the project is set to start in Côte d'Ivoire in cooperation with local private insurance companies and distributors, with plans to expand into additional West African countries.

R4’s approach is now expanding to a new crop, Cocoa, in Cote d'Ivoire. The Cocoa micro-insurance project is increasing the diversification of micro-insurance using area Yield Index Insurance for the Cocoa value chain.

R4 is aiming to support approximately 1.4 million households (7.5 million beneficiaries) with integrated climate risk management in 25 countries by 2025, with the added benefit of expanding access to these insurance products to a broader market beyond the R4 participant farmers.