R4 Rural resilience initiative: quarterly report - April to June 2015

This reports presents the updates from April to June 2015 of the R4 Rural Resilience Initiative. R4 refers to the four risk management strategies integrated to strengthen farmers’ food and income security. This quarter marked the beginning of the R4 implementationphase in Malawi and Zambia, and continued expansion in Ethiopia and Senegal. The reports also presents a case study on warrantage, an inventory credit scheme successfully tested in Senegal.

The R4 initiative combines 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). The R4 Rural Resilience Initiative (R4) is a strategic partnership between Oxfam America (OA) and the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP). R4 was initiated in 2011 to respond to the challenges faced by food-insecure communities enduring increasingly frequent and intense climate disasters and other shocks. The program builds on the initial success of HARITA (Horn of Africa Risk Transfer for Adaptation), an integrated risk management framework developed by Oxfam America, the Relief Society of Tigray (REST), Ethiopian farmers and several other national and global partners