Adaptation Community Meeting: Preparing Africa for extreme climate events – the role of the African Risk Capacity

On April 20, 2017, the Adaptation Community Meeting hosted Erica Hovani and Ekhosuehi Iyahen for a discussion on African Risk Capacity. 

African Risk Capacity (ARC) is a sovereign insurance pool and early disaster response mechanism owned and governed by its African Member States. ARC helps its Member States to take the lead on disaster response by bringing together three elements: early warning, contingency planning and insurance. In order to participate in ARC, Member States must customize ARC’s early warning software Africa RiskView for their country context; identify and quantify their weather risk and what to transfer through insurance; and define a pre-agreed contingency plan in the event of ARC insurance payouts. Governments can then access immediate funds for early responses in the case of a natural disaster. Reducing the time it takes for assistance to reach those affected through early, nationally-led response reduces costs and the reliance on international appeals for assistance over time, but, more importantly, it saves the lives and livelihoods of those affected. Together ARC countries are catalyzing an essential paradigm shift in the humanitarian landscape to anticipatory, nationally-owned responses to natural disasters, but also providing an opportunity for donors, humanitarian organizations and private sector actors to reinforce the government-led risk management system they are building and to define a new way of responding to predictable natural disasters.

This event was organized by the USAID Climate Change Adaptation, Thought Leadership, and Assessments (ATLAS) project. All Adaptation Community Meeting webinars can be found here.