By Arret Jatta
The National Disaster Management Agency (NDMA) and partners recently held a five-day capacity building to review the African Risk Capability (ARC) drought insurance policy for the 2025 agricultural season.
Held at Senegambia Beach Hotel in Kololi, the review aims to protect vulnerabilities and government investment in the agricultural sector to ensure food security.
Pa Ousman Jarju, a representative from ARC-Gambia, said the programme is part of the Africa Integrated Climate Risk Management Programme, which is funded by the Green Climate Fund, the African Development Bank, the World Food Programme, and the African Risk Capacity.
“The first components are risk preparedness, risk reduction, and risk transfer. The ARC is implementing jointly with WFP component three, but mainly on sovereign risk transfer,” he said.
He added that the programme also has certain components of risk reduction.
“This programme is meant to support the country, particularly on risk financing, in paying for the premium in addition to the capacity building and also developing insurance risk transfer strategies and financing.”
Mawdo Amadou Jallow, Government Coordinator of African Risk Capacity, highlighted that the government of the Gambia began the journey with the ARC in 2014, when it signed the Pre-Participation Memorandum of Understanding with the ARC, paving the way for the country’s participation in the risk pool in 2015.
“That is when Gambia decided to pay the premium with the ARC, take out insurance with the ARC, and since then as part of work to advance the ARC programme in The Gambia, the TWG, which was established, continued on an annual basis to do a customisation of the African risk pool, which is the software engine that predicts and depicts drought situations and severe weather conditions in case they occur,” he explained.
Freddie Kaku, Country Engagement Manager for Western and Central Africa, said the ARC programme aims to customise and update the risk profile of the country to get it into the risk pool of ARC.
