Africa, insufficiently prepared for natural disasters
According to a study by the risk management company Verisk Maplecroft (2016), Africa is the continent most vulnerable to natural disasters: it is home to eight of the nine most vulnerable countries namely, in order, South Sudan, Burundi, Eritrea, Chad, Niger, Sudan, Mali and the Democratic Republic of Congo (Afghanistan slips into this ranking in second place). It is remarkable that this conclusion comes in counterpoint to the fact that it is not Africa but Asia that is most exposed to these disasters. Africa's vulnerability to disasters stems from structural factors, again according to this report, which cites "poor governance, insufficient infrastructure and a high level of poverty and corruption".
You cannot prevent a natural disaster. But we can prepare for it, both to limit the damage and to facilitate reconstruction. But poor countries have more difficulty than rich countries in achieving this. Thus in 1990, according to a World Bank study, countries with a gross national product (GNP) of less than $ 2,000 per capita experienced an average of 9.4 deaths per million inhabitants due to natural disasters, while countries with a GNP of more than $ 14,000 per capita only had 1.8 (Aizenman et al., 2013). This figure should be taken with caution, because natural disasters are not distributed equitably between rich and poor countries. But they reflect the difficulty for the poorest countries to meet the costs generated by disasters. They will be less inclined to spend on preventive actions for a serious but unlikely threat, and will have less means to finance reconstruction.
The least diversified countries are those who will have the hardest time recovering from a disaster. In low-income countries, the agricultural sector accounts for almost a quarter of the damage caused by natural disasters (Aizenman et al., 2013). The dissemination of new tools such as index insurance will enable farmers to be better equipped to deal with such disasters (see the article by Samuel Diop in this issue on this subject).
Faced with large-scale threats (nuclear accident, epidemic, terrorist attack, natural or macroeconomic crisis), the insurance sector cannot cover all risks on its own. States have many methods of sharing risks at the global level. International financial institutions offer various solutions (see Aizenman et al., 2013, for a presentation of the different methods available to states). But insurance can play a decisive role. By mobilizing agents' savings, it contributes to better risk management while reducing budgetary pressure on States. The latter thus free up resources to finance other priorities and thus devote themselves fully to development.
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