Background
IFPRI’s picture-based insurance (PBI) initiative, recognized as a CGIAR@50 Innovation, has successfully used smartphone pictures of farmers’ fields to detect crop damage. PBI tools are also used to provide low-cost, interactive advisory services, with crop images enabling unprecedented levels of tailoring and timeliness of remote advisories. Providing insurance bundled with advisories can be mutually beneficial – by reducing barriers to technology adoption and disincentivizing opportunistic behaviour. Together with its partners, IFPRI was awarded funding for a multi-country cluster randomized control trial in the state of Haryana, India, and in Kenya, to evaluate the effect of these image-based remote advisories on knowledge, technology adoption, and farming outcomes, while assessing heterogeneity in returns and underlying behavioral mechanisms. Additionally, the project will investigate the potential for advisories to reduce adverse selection and moral hazard concerns in PBI.
IFPRI is seeking a qualified organization to implement a cluster randomized trial across Kenya to evaluate impacts of remote personalized advisories offered to farmers with stronger versus weaker encouragements to enroll in picture-based insurance in the Long Rains 2022 and Short Rains 2022/23 season. This will include developing and providing generic advisories to control group farmers and developing and providing personalized remote advisories based on smartphone pictures to farmers in the treatment group through SeeItGrow, and responding to questions in the advisory portal with the aim of advisory classification after providing an advisory. Activities will also include reviewing, approving and rejecting smartphone images submitted by farmers and their champion farmers, operating a call center that farmers can call with questions, and contributing to the loss assessment that is used to evaluate insurance claims. The position is based in Kenya.
Scope of work
Application Deadline: July 1, 2022
