Drought: The silent death

To guard against such hazards, developed countries have invested enormous budgets for the implementation of prevention, alert as well as measurement systems which proved to be very efficient.

We can but notice that such devices are mainly focused on risks that are specific to rich countries: cyclones, typhoons, earthquakes, and on some regions of economic stakes.

Overglobalization confers a spectacular dimension on these events even though tsunamis and earthquakes are not the only disasters that kill and ruin lives.

Droughts are plagues that are equally devastating with just humanitarian organizations being mobilized to address them. After the 1984 great famine and its millions of victims, climatic hazards are once more likely to take their toll on Ethiopia. Estimates have already referred to 1.6 billion USD in losses for the year 2006.

Like Ethiopia, the majority of the world population owes its survival to farming. However, a year of acute drought or locust invasions is enough to ruin crops or to condemn men to a silent death.

Following the example of Morocco, which introduced an insurance to cover its cereal production, the emerging countries that are the most exposed to drought risks must set up a system of compensation that would guard a vital sector of their economy against such hazards.

This means that a window of opportunity for business is opening up for insurers provided, of course, that they accept to invest in it.