The R4 Rural Resilience Initiative

More than 2.3 billion people live on less than US$ 1.25 a day and depend on agriculture for their livelihoods. Vulnerability to climate-related shocks – made more frequent and intense by climate change –  is a constant threat to their ability to secure enough nutritious food throughout the year. In the face of these challenges, the World Food Programme (WFP) is developing innovative tools and strategies to reduce and mitigate risks in order to overcome hunger, achieve food security and enhance resilience.

WFP and Oxfam America launched the R4 Rural Resilience Initiative (R4) in 2011 to enable vulnerable rural families to increase their food and income security by managing climate-related risks.

As of 2019, R4 reached over 87,000 farmers (about 450,000 people) in Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Senegal, Zambia and Zimbabwe through a combination of four risk management strategies: improved resource management through asset creation (risk reduction); insurance (risk transfer); livelihoods diversification and microcredit (prudent risk taking); and savings (risk reserves). In 2018, around US$ 1.5 million of insurance payouts were distributed through the initiative in Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Senegal and Zambia to compensate for weather-related losses. 

Through its innovative integrated climate risk management approach, R4 enables the poorest farmers to access crop insurance by participating in risk reduction activities. Assets built through such activities – including WFP’s Food Assistance for Assets programmes – promote the resilience of farmers and their families by steadily decreasing vulnerability to disaster risks over time.