These African financiers are closing the gap between risk and resilience

As global aid budgets tighten and the cost of climate disasters rises, development finance leaders are increasingly looking to tools that can protect vulnerable communities before crises strike. Across Africa, regional banks and insurers are developing new financial models that merge credit, insurance, and local capital to build resilience in cost-effective ways. That shift was the focus of a conversation between Serge Ekué, president of the West African Development Bank, and Hope Murera, CEO of reinsurer Zep-Re, at Devex Impact House during the World Bank and IMF Annual Meetings in Washington, D.C. Murera, whose company operates as a specialized reinsurer under COMESA, said Zep-Re is focused on reshaping insurance to better reflect the realities of African economies. “Reinsurance is global. Insurance is global. But what are the real realities on the ground that we need to solve for?” she said. The answer, she argued, lies in designing protection for the people and sectors most exposed to risk — smallholder farmers, women, and small businesses. “When we have disasters, 95% of those are uninsured,” she said. “It is impacting the vulnerable, the small scale, the women, the SMEs.” Zep-Re’s approach links insurance to credit and inclusion. Through its DRIVE initiative — De-Risking, Inclusion and Value Enhancement for Pastoral Communities — the company combines drought coverage with financial services to help pastoralists in the Horn of Africa access savings and loans. Over three years, the program has opened 500,000 bank accounts for people who previously had none. “Credit and insurance are merging,” Murera said. “We de-risk them so that they can access credit and be in a bracket that is productive.” Her team is applying the same model to agriculture. Zep-Re’s subsidiary, ECAFRICA, has extended coverage to millions of smallholder farmers, while pooling risk across countries has mobilized about $300 million in global reinsurance capacity for drought protection. Murera said scaling such programs depends on policy reform and affordability. Because Zep-Re is owned by governments, it can convene regulators and ministries to strengthen disaster frameworks. Its ZEPRI Academy trains officials across Eastern and Southern Africa “because everybody has to be at the same table,” she said. The company is also investing in digital platforms and blended finance to lower costs and expand access. A growing focus is ensuring that public infrastructure is insured before disaster strikes. “Countries borrow or use the tax funds to build infrastructure ... and then it’s flooded and it goes back to zero,” Murera said. Zep-Re now works with development financiers to embed climate coverage into power and transport projects, such as renewable energy plants vulnerable to drought. Ekué offered a complementary perspective from the lending side. Leading a bank that serves eight West African countries and about 150 million people, he said his institution aims to combine local insight with global reach. “We do have local insights, which is important, and we combine it with our global ambitions,” he said. “We are a bank that is small enough to care ... but big enough to deliver.” Among its initiatives is its Shock Resilience Loan Program — a parametric insurance mechanism that automatically triggers support when floods or droughts occur. Ekué said the goal is to ensure help arrives quickly rather than after a disaster has already caused major damage. The program is designed to anticipate climate-linked shocks and protect member countries before they escalate. He added that the bank’s broader mission is to align financial tools with long-term development goals such as job creation and stability. That work, he said, often begins with local ideas — identifying needs for infrastructure, energy, or mobility — and then helping turn those aspirations into viable, fundable projects. The bank’s “originate to distribute” model is built around that process: developing transactions from the ground up, structuring them to attract investment, and underwriting them to ensure they can be financed sustainably. Because ultimately, Ekué said, there is one truism that guides this work: “An idea is an idea, an idea is not a project.”