The Nigeria Incentive Based Risk Sharing System for Agricultural Lending (NIRSAL) has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with two Moroccan firms to expand agricultural insurance coverage in the country. The two firms are Mutuelle Agricole Marocaine d’Assurance (MAMDA) and MAMDA Reassurance (MAMDA-RE).
Signing the MoU in Abuja on Friday, the Managing Director of NIRSAL, Mr Aliyu Abdulhameed, said the partnership was a product of the bilateral agreement signed between President Muhammadu Buhari and King Mohammed VI of Morocco in December 2016. He noted that the MoU would cover `index based insurance products’ which included weather, pricing and yield to protect farmers’ investments in case of flood, fire or pestilence.
Abdulhameed said the move was to de-risk agriculture, facilitate flow of finance to the sector to diversify the economy, attain self-sufficiency in food production and entrench inclusive economic growth. According to him, NIRSAL’s target is to move insurance coverage from about 0.5 million to 3.8 million agricultural primary producers to help reduce credit risks, increase lending and investments across the agriculture value chain. Abdulhameed said the partnership would involve advanced technical training on surveying aggregated farmlands, large commercial and plantations farms and loss assessment methods.
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