Kenya is known as a leading tourist destination worldwide. The key attraction? It’s rich culture, excellent hospitality, and diverse climate that span snowcapped Mount Kenya, white-sand beaches along the warm Indian Ocean, and endless savanna grasslands. The jewel in Kenya’s crown is its rich wildlife-inspired safaris in its national parks, game reserves, and conservancies.

It is easy to assume that most wildlife is protected, but this is, sadly, not the case. More than 65% of the wildlife in the country lives outside of protected areas. This means daily interactions with communities and households, which often result in unfortunate conflicts. These conflicts subsequently lead to losses and casualties for both the wildlife and the humans they interact with, i.e., human-wildlife conflict (HWC).

The stories from affected communities are heart-wrenching. Why should a family living in its ancestral land bear the losses from wildlife that is an asset to the nation and an attraction for the tourists and visitors we so proudly love to host? This is not the only dilemma: who should give way between humans and wildlife? And can people and wildlife co-exist? If the answer is yes, there is a need to catalyse coexistence to safeguard our biodiversity and maintain the delicate ecosystem balance.

Understanding the Problem

In 2018, AB Entheos (then AB Consultants) sought to work on this problem through a feasibility study financed by the International Institute for Research and Development (IIED). Armed with a hypothesis that people have no problem co-existing with wildlife as long as they do not lose their livelihood to HWC, the AB team went down to the Tsavo and Amboseli ecosystems. There, they learned about the challenges, the coping mechanisms, and sentiments on the ground. The AB team also explored using insurance to compensate people for financial losses incurred from conflict incidents as an incentive to prevent retaliatory attacks on wildlife.

Can Insurance Support Coexistence?

Bold, you could say-where does insurance and wildlife or nature intersect? Is it even remotely possible? But hey!! AB exists to build and deliver solutions to the real challenges faced by people in their contexts using the tools they have built and mastered over time under the banner of micro and inclusive insurance

Where do insurance and wildlife or nature intersect? Is it even remotely possible?

From Research to National Dialogue

After these community interactions and with the support of the Kenya Wildlife Service, the AB team developed and tested a HWC insurance prototype with the communities. On 15th May 2019, this solution was presented via a half-day forum to the government of Kenya, through the Ministry of Tourism and Wildlife, community representatives from affected regions, and the private sector, represented by insurance and conservation organisations. The dialogue resulted in a national task force to design HWC insurance that could be piloted by the government to protect livelihoods for the people and protect the wildlife from retaliatory killings. 

How Did the Pilot Work?

In April 2023, five years after AB Entheos’ first trip to Taita Taveta, President William Ruto launched a pilot for a tech-enabled HWC compensation scheme. The pilot was launched in six counties – Taita Taveta, Kajiado, Meru, Baringo, Laikipia, and Narok that account for over 80% of all HWC incidents in the country. By this time, a new language that intersects the science of conservation and insurance had emerged. Instead of loss assessors and adjusters, a new community-led troop, dubbed “community verification officers” (CVOs), was commissioned to respond to incidents in the shortest time. CVOs had up to 24 hours from the time of occurrence or reporting to respond.

To enable the CVOs, AB Entheos equipped them with all-terrain motorcycles and smartphones with an in-built application to collect and submit geotagged evidence to a central data hub for processing. The results? Incidents were responded to, and evidence was collected, on average, within six hours of reporting. In addition, claimants received their compensation directly to their mobile money accounts. This was a first in the country.

Pilot Highlights

• Pilot launched in April 2023
• Six pilot counties
• Community Verification Officers (CVOs)
• All-terrain motorcycles and smartphones
• Geotagged digital reporting
• Average response time of six hours
• Compensation paid directly to mobile money accounts

Why Partnerships Matter

“Success often has many owners”, and – in this case – AB was one of them. The AB team, with the guidance of the Ministry of Wildlife and Tourism, agreed t to work with partners, which meant that more households would be covered and compensated faster, more livelihoods would be secured, and less wildlife would be lost to retaliatory killings.

To implement the national pilot in the six counties, a consortium comprising AB Entheos, Minet Kenya, and Pula Advisors was awarded the contract by the government. Minet, a conventional regional insurance broker, and Pula Advisors, whose core business is agriculture insurance for smallholder farmers, were ushered into the new territory of a human-wildlife conflict compensation scheme. Minet Kenya was already part of the government task force that designed the solution.

Key Lessons from the Pilot

The bottom line here is that insurance can be used as a tool to de-risk communities in Africa from financial losses that are unique to them. This is only possible if insurance practitioners are willing to think outside of the conventional box to understand people’s real needs and build with the communities. This has been part of AB’s ethos since our founding. As things stand, we’re using the same principles to design future schemes: in the oven are other nature risk solutions that we’re baking, ideally with like-minded partners. Watch this space for more!

The bottom line here is that insurance can be used as a tool to de-risk communities in Africa from financial losses that are unique to them.

— Anne Kamau, Executive Director, AB Entheos

Author: Anne Kamau
Position: Executive Director, AB Entheos
Email: anne@ab-entheos.co.ke