Blog

Andrew Zimba began his career as a teacher, and a passion that started with computers and music grew into a career spanning the public and private sectors, across consulting, software development, and insurance. Today, he serves as Digital Solutions Lead at ZEP-RE (PTA Reinsurance Company), a regional reinsurance company, where he supports the World Bank-funded De-risking, Inclusion, and Value Enhancement for Pastoralist Economies (DRIVE) project, which works to expand pastoralist access to financial services across the Horn of Africa. In this conversation, Andrew reflects on natural catastrophe risk and the role digital platforms and technology can play in scaling inclusive insurance solutions.

What does insurance market development for NatCat products mean, and how does ZEP-RE approach it?

When we talk about insurance market development for natural catastrophes, or in short, NatCat products, we are talking about building an ecosystem that enables countries and communities to better manage climate and disaster risks before they occur. Many people think insurance is simply about selling policies, but market development goes much further. It involves creating the conditions that make insurance sustainable and accessible. That includes reliable risk data, supportive regulation, distribution channels, consumer awareness, and — where I lean to mostly — digital infrastructure and participation from insurers, reinsurers, governments, and development partners.

NatCat products are central to ZEP-RE's mandate, because climate-related risks represent one of the largest protection gaps facing Africa today. Yet, insurance penetration remains relatively low, particularly among vulnerable populations like the pastoral economies. As a regional reinsurer, ZEP-RE plays a unique role in helping insurance markets mature by providing technical expertise, reinsurance capacity, and support for market innovation. So for us, NatCat insurance is not simply an insurance product, it is a vehicle for climate resilience, financial inclusion, market development, and long-term economic stability across the region.

The DRIVE program focuses on pastoralists and livestock, who are very difficult to insure. How have you done that, and what constraints affect bringing private capital into this sector?

The starting point is understanding that livestock is much more than economic assets. Livestock represents wealth, income, food security, cultural identity, and household resilience. Traditional insurance approaches struggle in these environments, because verifying individual livestock losses across vast geographic rangelands is very costly and operationally challenging. This is where parametric and index-based insurance become powerful. Rather than assessing individual losses, these products rely on objective indicators such as vegetation conditions, rainfall patterns, and drought indices to estimate the impact of climate shocks. However, successful product design requires much more than risk modeling — it requires understanding migration patterns, lifestyle, community structures, local livelihoods, financial behaviors, and trust dynamics.

One of the biggest challenges is uncertainty. Private insurers and reinsurers need confidence in the quality of risk data, customer information, exposure models, and historical performance before committing capital into the value chain. Digital infrastructure helps solve these challenges by making risk more visible, measurable, and manageable — through registration, digital payments, spatial mapping, remote monitoring, and integrated data platforms. As these ecosystems become more connected, insurance can move from being a standalone product to becoming an embedded service within broader agricultural and financial systems, making universal coverage more achievable and more attractive to private capital.

Andrew presenting the award-winning Digital Inclusivity Platform at CIO100 Africa, where the solution received a Gold Medal for advancing digital insurance and financial inclusion for underserved communities

Can you tell us concretely how this has worked in DRIVE, and what it looks like from the pastoralist's perspective?

When we started building the tools to penetrate the pastoral economies, we identified systems that we did not have to build from the ground up. We leveraged systems that are already there — the bottom line is integration and interoperability with existing systems: mobile money, insurers, and those participating in the DRIVE project for sharing the risks. We've brought it down to an acronym — DI, the Digital Inclusivity Platform — meaning we are open to integration with systems that are proven, that can drive products right to the pastoralists.

At a minimum, scalable insurance solutions require four critical components. First, reliable customer identity management systems. Second, accessible enrollment channels such as mobile applications, USSD services, and agent networks. Third, secure digital payments — and this touches on the trust dynamics — so that we enable efficient premium collections and payouts to the pastoralists. Fourth, integrated data and analytics platforms that support monitoring, reporting, and decision making. In the DRIVE project, ZEP-RE has leveraged these building blocks to support hundreds of thousands of pastoralist households across Kenya, Ethiopia, and Somalia. It's more about taking the product to them than them coming to access these products the traditional way.

Andrew with DRIVE programme stakeholders from the World Bank, ZEP-RE, and government representatives from Ethiopia, Somalia, and Kenya

Do you see artificial intelligence (AI) creating broader efficiencies — including cost efficiencies — for enabling insurance solutions, especially in fragile contexts?

AI is here to stay, and we must adopt the innovation into our daily activities. A significant portion of insurance costs comes from customer acquisition. But if you use technology, you'll be able to reduce some of those costs, across policy administration, verification, servicing, and monitoring. AI can also strengthen risk modeling by reading satellite imagery, climate data, and historical records to understand patterns and behavioral insights, improving pricing accuracy and trigger designs. When we bring in AI, it bridges the gap, because it assists the locals to be brought closer to the products and services.

Where do you see opportunities for applying the learnings from DRIVE to other underserved markets?

Many so-called unready markets, to me, are actually highly innovative markets. The only thing is that penetration is a bit weaker. The biggest opportunity lies in building digital ecosystems that connect underserved populations to financial services through tools that are already in use. I also see significant potential in embedded insurance models, where insurance is integrated into existing services such as agriculture, livestock production, credit, savings, and digital marketplaces. Rather than asking customers to seek insurance separately, we can bring protection closer to their everyday activities.

Could you talk about the nomadic aspect — the complexities of focusing on pastoralists — and how you've tackled this?

The nature of a farmer is fixed land, with all agricultural activities within that fixed land. Pastoralists don't have fixed land. Nomads are always in search of green zones with fodder to feed their livestock, so they're always moving. Some grazing lands are in other territories, so pastoralists would cross over to other countries, and there would be conflicts. Through DRIVE, they have participated in such a way that even when it's dry, they know they can get a payout to get fodder and water for their animals. So, in DRIVE, we've really played a role in reducing these conflicts across borders, across grazing lands, and across all these pastoral economies.

For a government representative, what lessons from DRIVE would you distill — and what's your message to practitioners working on public-private partnerships?

The first lesson is that trust is more important than technology. Even with the best technology, adoption levels will be very low when there is no trust and transparency. It is important to build local partnerships and engage communities from the beginning. These communities are built different — there's no one size that fits all. The second lesson is that digital inclusion must be designed from day one — don't say the digital infrastructure will come at a later stage. To summarize our experience in one sentence: build trust first, design for inclusion from the start, and scale through partnerships rather than standalone interventions.

If I had to choose one priority, it would be investing in shared digital infrastructure that can support insurance ecosystems at scale. I've seen that most institutions and people in this market are developing systems in silos. No single organization can solve this challenge alone. We need governments, insurers, reinsurers, technology providers, development partners, and especially regulators to collaborate around common standards and platforms. If we get this right, we will not only accelerate NatCat insurance adoption, but also create the foundation for broader financial inclusion, climate resilience, and sustainable development.

You said "if we get this right." Why are we not getting it right?

I think it's because of fear and competition; we want to be the first one to reach the finishing line. We need to stop operating in silos. For example, in Kenya, I cannot build an M-Pesa platform for mobile money — I would integrate with them, because it's already working. The idea is to let regulators build frameworks that will safeguard all the stakeholders.

Any closing thoughts?

As we look to the future, I believe the greatest opportunity lies at the intersection of insurance, digital innovation, and data. The data being generated through insurance ecosystems can help us design products and services, training programs, and resilient solutions that are more targeted, inclusive and impactful. The bottom line is, as I said before, “technology does not come faster than trust”.