The Nigeria Incentive Based Risk Sharing System for Agricultural Lending (NIRSAL Plc) has signed a partnership agreement with two reputable Moroccan agricultural insurance and re-insurance companies, Mutuelle Agricole Marocaine D’Assurances (MAMDA) and MAMDA Reassurance in its efforts to increase the number of insured farmers in Nigeria from 500,000 to 3.8 million.
The partnership is also designed to enable the exchange of ideas, enhance NIRSAL’s technical capacity to develop innovative and targeted insurance products to protect small, medium and large scale agricultural investments from natural disasters such as floods, droughts and crop diseases.
The Managing Director of NIRSAL, Mr. Aliyu Abdulhameed, who made the diclosure in Abuja at the signing ceremony yesterday, said NIRSAL’s collaboration with MAMDA and MAMDA Re was a product of the bilateral agreements that President Muhammadu Buhari signed in December 2016 during the visit of the King of Morocco, King Mohammed VI to Nigeria.
According to him, the partnership will include the design and development of named peril crop insurance, index-based insurance products including area, weather and yield.
“It will also involve advanced technical training on surveying aggregated smallholder farmlands, large commercial and plantations farms and loss assessment methods, technical training on Geographic Information System(GIS),technology for agriculture and Remote Sensing application in Agricultural Crop Insurance.
“Another significant part of the programme is the extensive training of NIRSAL employees in Morocco in all areas related to agricultural insurance and related risk management tools.
Other aspects include provision of technical assistance to NIRSAL in new insurance product development, training in the use of technology to enhance agricultural productivity and capacity building on parametric insurance establishment and development”, he revealed.
Abdulhammed said NIRSAL, as a private sector-led policy tool of the government with the mandate to de-risk agriculture, increase private sector investment to unleash the sector’s unmatched potential for job creation, ensures food security and economic diversification, was particularly excited at the collaboration.
He further stated that the strong insurance focus of the collaboration was in line with NIRSAL’s corporate objective of expanding insurance products for agricultural lending.
He added that NIRSAL’s target was “to move insurance coverage from the level of about 0.5 million to 3.8 million agricultural primary producers. This will help reduce credit risks, increase lending and investment across the entire agricultural value chain”.
The NIRSAL boss thanked President Muhammadu Buhari for his leadership and vision to entrench agriculture as the driver of Nigeria’s economy.
He also commended the leadership of MAMDA and MAMDA Re for taking the bold step of partnering with NIRSAL.
“This is in continuation of its mandate to de-risk agriculture and facilitate the flow of finance to the sector to help achieve the objectives of the Economic Recovery Growth Plan (ERGP) of the Buhari administration to diversify the economy, attain self-sufficiency in food production and entrench inclusive economic growth”, he added.