BASIS will hold a conference titled Buidling Resilience and Assets for Food Security: Implications for Feed the Future on September 29-30, 2011 in Washington, DC. Agenda and online registration are now available.

The I4 Index Insurance Innovation Initiative invites researchers to submit seed grant proposals to develop and establish the feasibility of long-term pilot activities that will design, market and evaluate innovative index insurance contracts targeted at improving the lives and livelihoods of small-scale agricultural or pastoral households.  Seed grants will provide $20,000 to underwrite the costs of the partnership development and the preliminary analysis necessary to prepare a full proposal for a long-term pilot activity.  After approval, full proposals for three to four year activities will be funded at levels of up to $1 million dollars.  Click here for the complete RFP.

BASIS partner ILRI produced this video to help illustrate the innovative insurance product being piloted in drought-prone areas of Kenya. There is also a shorter introduction video available. For more details, see project description.

BASIS AMA CRSP Annual Report 2008-09 now online.

BASIS announces the creation of I4, the Index Insurance Innovation Initiative.

BASIS co-sponsored the "Poverty Traps" conference, which featured more than two dozen presentations and an address by Senator Richard Lugar on chronic poverty and global food security.

Presentations and more found here...

BASIS and its partners announce a workshop invitation: "Insuring Livestock against Drought-Related Mortality: The Marsabit Pilot"



Workshop to be held Monday, March 16th 2009, at the International Livestock Research Institute's Nairobi campus
Details...

BASIS new long-term research projects
More...

"Rural Prosperity through Innovative Research"

Pathways from rural poverty are not the same for all people, in all places. For some, it requires relaxation of the financial market constraints that prevent them from accessing the assets and complementary resources needed to realize returns to labor and skills. For others, it requires a labor-intensive pattern of agricultural growth that raises wages for unskilled workers. But whatever the pathway, elimination of chronic poverty requires mechanisms to manage the risk, vulnerability and other constraints that undercut the nutritional, health and educational investments needed to bolster the human capital of the next generation and break the inequitable intergenerational transmission of poverty.

BASIS is dedicated to the kind of creative research that can change the terms of the debate and significantly impact development policy and programming. BASIS focuses on:

• The dynamics of rural and agricultural economies, and the constraints that make it difficult for some households to participate effectively in growth and get ahead economically over time;
• Emerging ideas about interventions and programs that can be expected to relax those constraints;
• Tools for designing, testing and implementing interventions such that their impact can be credibly evaluated and their full development impact realized; and,
• Effective outreach and communication of research results to the development policy and programming community.