Tearfund

Ethiopia | Early Warning System, Humanitarian, Mapping and weather alerts

The company

Tearfund focuses on meeting emergency needs, mobilising churches, transforming communities and changing society to tackle extreme policy through humanitarian response, community development and advocacy and influencing.

Problem

Ethiopia’s lowland regions are experiencing a fifth consecutive drought, severely affecting agro-pastoralist communities whose livelihoods depend on climate-sensitive activities. These communities suffer from lack of access to real-time weather information, insurance products and effective weather forecasting.

GSMA project

In November 2023, Tearfund received a GSMA grant to educate cooperative members, self-help groups and smallholder farmers on the benefits of parametric insurance. It also provides parametric insurance for agro-pastoralist communities in partnership with Nyala, Yokahu Insurance and jamii.one.

Traction

As of March 2025, more than 800 smallholder groups and cooperatives have been digitalised.
More than 43,000 community members have received weather advisory and agricultural advice via SMS and IVR.

A message from the Project Lead

“Accessing index based insurance products on a mobile phone app is ground breaking in Ethiopia. It will revolutionise the way pastoralists and farmers in drought affected communities anticipate and mitigate the effects of drought related disasters on their livelihoods. This concept is quite new in Ethiopia but meets the real needs of a substantial portion of the population in the southern and eastern regions of the country. There’s also great potential to deliver this solution at scale in other regions.”

– Mahider Tulu, Project Lead