Delivering risk management solutions through public-private partnerships in Africa

Background

Governments are increasingly using insurance to achieve public policy objectives, especially those related to decent work, universal health coverage, food security and climate change adaptation, using policy and regulation to build conducive environments, but also as a provider or procurer of services. Governments can leverage the expertise of the private sector to achieve public policy objectives efficiently.

A central learning agenda for the project is to gain a better understanding of how such partnerships can be structured and implemented. In order to maximize the potential of risk management solutions to contribute towards social, economic and environmental development objectives such as achieving universal health coverage and promoting climate change adaption, partnerships between the public and private sectors are essential. We need to better understand how projects can combine the strength of the public sector and private sector more effectively.

Purpose

The ILO’s Social Finance Programme, in partnership with the Agence Française de Développement will support four to five partners in Sub Saharan African to implement risk management solutions for low-income households and/or small enterprises to achieve social and development impact.

The projects will focus on the following themes:
  • Extending existing national health schemes to unserved population segments
  • Scaling up individual or meso-level agricultural insurance to enhance the resilience of small-scale farmers and promote food security
  • Introducing integrated risk management solutions for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to promote stronger SMEs, decent work and reduce vulnerability

Activities

  • Innovation management: The innovation component aims to catalyse scaling of solutions for the low-income households and SMEs by selected providers. The partnership will test integrated risk management solutions in one of the three thematic areas with 4-6 innovation partners, and publicly share the resulting lessons and experiences. The Facility will measure and document the impact of the services on clients and partners, and promote peer learning and capacity building of other providers to promote the application of lessons learnt on this project in other countries.
  • Capacity and knowledge development: This component will focus on translating the learning from the innovation projects into training materials and knowledge products that can benefit the wider insurance to manage innovation and the related organizational changes, and that government policymakers can use to design and implement public-private partnerships to achieve policy objectives. The activities under this component include: face-to-face trainings using local training institutes, promoting knowledge exchange across geographies by inviting partners to participate in workshops in other regions, and promoting learning by policymakers by participating in the ILO’s Impact Insurance Academy.