Final technical report on the Drought Index-insurance for Resilience in the Sahel and Horn of Africa (DIRISHA) project
This report examines if crowdsourcing app KAZNET can be used to collect data on drought impacts and improve early warning systems and index-based drought risk financing and insurance products. Addressing climatic shocks and building resilience of food systems are key national priorities in sub-Saharan Africa. To improve drought monitoring and index-based drought risk financing and insurance (IBDRFI) products, data must be collected from the field to calibrate model parameters and verify their accuracy.
In this report, we addressed the following research questions:
- How are the impacts of drought transmitted to households?
- Can crowdsourcing be used to collect high frequency data on drought impacts?
- Can crowdsourced ground truthing data be used to improve early warning systems and IBDRFI products?
We collected data through weekly monitoring of markets, rangeland transects, and households in Marsabit, Samburu, Isiolo, Wajir, and Garissa counties in Kenya and East Hararghe, Borena, and Afder zones in Ethiopia. Descriptive statistics were computed to understand trends in key indicators and econometrics were used to test causal relationships.