Do seasonal climate forecasts

As smallholder farmers in Southern Africa face inevitable drought, the need to develop efficient drought mitigation, risk- transfer and risk-protection mechanisms becomes an important yet challenging policy task. Risk-transfer and protection mechanisms in the form of agricultural insurance markets are largely a missing link across most poor developing countries in Africa. Rather than treating drought as a natural disaster warranting emergency declarations whenever it strikes, countries in Southern Africa are slowly embracing insurance markets as risk farm management tool. Although drought cannot be eliminated, its impact can be reduced through implementation of pro-active and pro- poor risk management policy programs. The absence of agricultural insurance may be attributable to the widespread belief that poor smallholder farmers lack the sophistication to properly use insurance to manage risk.