The favourable impacts of Index-Based Livestock Insurance: Evaluation results from Ethiopia and Kenya

<p><b>A.</b> The indicated Hhat constructs were expressed in and purified from 293FT cells as described in <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0011195#s2" target="_blank">Materials and Methods</a>. Aliquots of each purified protein were analyzed by SDS-PAGE and Western blotting using anti-Flag antibody. EV, empty vector. <b>B.</b> Each purified HhatHAFlagHis construct was incubated with Shh at the indicated concentration in the presence of 100 µM ¹²⁵I-iodo-palmitoyl CoA for 1 h at room temperature. <b>C.</b> Each purified HhatHAFlagHis construct was incubated with ¹²⁵I-iodo-palmitoyl CoA at the indicated concentration in the presence of 40 µM Shh. Shh protein bands were excised from dried gels and the amount of ¹²⁵I-iodo-palmitate incorporation was determined by gamma counting. Graphs represent the average of three experiments corrected for non-specific incorporation of ¹²⁵I-iodo-palmitate as described previously <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0011195#pone.0011195-Buglino1" target="_blank">[11]</a>.</p

Crowdsourcing for rangeland conditions—Process innovation and beyond

National Science FoundationAtkinson Center for a Sustainable Futur

Characterization for index based livestock insurance

Pastoral populations of sub-Saharan Africa are particularly vulnerable to losses in wealth and productive assets via herdmortality shocks. Although conventional insurance mechanisms covering individual losses are not cost effective in low income extensive grazing pastoral communities, index insurance for livestock offers a promising alternative. This paper identifies regions most suitable for an index-based livestock insurance product: areas predicted to have high covariaterisk from drought, high potential demand for a livestock insurance product, and supporting market infrastructure for an insurance product. Our findings support current efforts to implement index insurance in Kenya and Ethiopia, and reveal additional areas for geographic expansion in western and southern Africa