Designed in Davos, Tested in Zimbabwe

The distance from the snowy peaks of Davos to a corn farm in Zimbabwe isn’t measured only in miles: They’re centuries apart in economic development. Bridging decades quickly is the impetus behind Blue Marble Microinsurance, a plan to offer crop indemnity insurance to farmers in sub-Saharan Africa. Unveiled in 2015 at the World Economic Forum, the initiative to sell small farmers inexpensive policies to reimburse them in the event of a weather disaster was started in November with a pilot involving 335 maize growers in Zimbabwe.

Blue Marble is an eight-member group that brings together industry giants such as American International Group, XL Group, and Zurich Insurance Group. The insurers hope the project helps them learn how to do good in the process of doing well, creating new customers for their products. “We’re trying to leverage their expertise in a very different kind of market,” says Joan Lamm-Tennant, Blue Marble’s chief executive officer. “It’s not a project that’s going to pay off in the first year.”