Disaster risk finance in Africa: lessons learnt from engagements

This note highlights lessons learned from World Bank Disaster Risk Financing and Insurance Program (DRFIP) engagements in 22 African countries. It offers a hands-on guide to planning and implementing risk financing projects that create effective and lasting solutions for partner governments. The aim of this note is to distill these lessons learned and to identify key principles that proved to be important for projects’ success.

Insights in this note were gathered from projects that differed in scope, design, and duration. While every project required context-specific solutions, the World Bank team often encountered similar challenges and opportunities. The resulting lessons draw from and contribute to the accumulated knowledge, experiences, and skills that this quickly expanding agenda thrives on. They also demonstrate how financial resilience through technically sound risk finance engagements is critical for fiscal stability and progress toward development goals as the region recovers from COVID-19 impacts.