Less than 60 km from Madagascar’s east coast, Noéline and her family live in Ankarimbary, a small village perched on a green hill. They were not spared by Cyclone Freddy in 2023. “We were terrified. Our huts were destroyed, our belongings scattered, and the rice fields rendered unusable. We lost all our tools,” the young mother recounts.
With no work tools, no shelter, and no resources, Noéline’s family saw their future darkened by the storm’s aftermath.
Freddy followed Cyclone Batsirai, which had struck just a year earlier, plunging nearly 150,000 people into poverty. Meanwhile, a chronic drought has gripped the island’s south since 2009. These worsening climate events, driven by global change, are growing more frequent and severe.
For years, their recurrence has been a pressing concern. As it marked its 60th anniversary in 2024, the African Development Bank continued strengthening emergency response mechanisms while focusing on long-term improvements to Malagasy livelihoods as the key to resilience.
In 2019, the Bank launched the African Disaster Risk Financing (ADRiFi) programme, investing $20.75 million to enhance climate disaster risk management and response.
“The programme directly supports local communities through five key initiatives,” explains Elisaha Rakotoseheno, Director of Resilience Promotion at the Prevention and Emergency Management Support Unit and head of ADRiFi. “These include building community shelters to withstand future cyclones, installing weather stations to improve climate data, reconstructing 100 classrooms, constructing storage facilities in the drought-prone south, and—most importantly—financing insurance premiums through the African Risk Capacity.”
African Risk Capacity (ARC) is a pan-African risk management mutual under the umbrella of the African Union. Set up in 2012, it aims to help African governments improve their capacity to plan for, prepare for and respond to extreme weather events. It incorporates a financing mechanism similar to that of an insurance company, enabling countries to rapidly obtain, in the form of insurance indemnities, the resources they need both to provide initial emergency aid and to enable sustainable reconstruction in the face of climatic hazards.
The achievements of ADRiFi
Since 2019, part of the African Development Bank’s funding for ADRiFi has been devoted to the Malagasy government’s subscription to ARC. Given the frequency and violence of the climatic hazards that affect the island, insurance was put to work almost immediately: in five years, $15 million has already been paid to Madagascar.
This compensation has enabled operators to take concrete, sustainable action, such as rebuilding traditional huts. “They built on the basis of a guide to building more resistant huts. Our aim is to introduce technical innovations to ensure that future huts are more resistant to the vagaries of the weather”, explains Elisha Rakotoseheno. These innovations include the installation of stronger, firmly harnessed roofs, construction on stilts treated against wood-boring insects and humidity, and the use of stronger materials. In all, more than 400 huts have enabled climate refugees to regain a dignified home.
In the districts of Bekily and Amboasary in the south of the country, two storage warehouses have been built to serve as community granaries for the local population, making it easier to provide seeds during droughts.
Thanks to ADRiFi, around a hundred classrooms in 50 schools have been rebuilt. Hurricane Freddy left almost 28,000 pupils without a school because there were no buildings to accommodate them.
In Ankarimbary, Noéline’s 13-year-old daughter Hortensia is back at school: “Today, our lives have become better. I can now take my little girl to school. She can build her future there. That’s what makes me proud,” she says with satisfaction. For Noéline, as for so many others, ADRiFi’s actions have given new hope.
Through the ARC insurance mechanism, Madagascar now has the financial and operational tools it needs to cope with droughts and tropical cyclones.
The decisive expertise of the WFP
However, the African Development Bank’s support for the people of Madagascar, who are prone to the vagaries of the weather, does not stop there. In an emergency context requiring a precise and appropriate response, the Bank has provided financial support to the World Food Programme (WFP) to bring emergency aid to the people. A total of 3.1 million dollars was made available to facilitate the purchase and distribution of three million tonnes of rice, pulses and oil to almost 450,000 people. “In the weeks following Batsirai and Freddy, people’s lives were really very hard, especially in terms of access to food and drinking water. External intervention was needed, and if the African Development Bank had not released funds, the situation would have been catastrophic. This money has saved lives”, says Rajaonarivelo Andriamiadana, Programme Manager at the WFP.
The Bank has enabled the WFP not only to take emergency action, but also to continue its work of building food resilience in a country where almost a third of the population is undernourished.
“We are proud to be able to help the population. But we are also all aware that there is still a lot to do. We must join hands to strengthen the resilience of the community and the country”, concludes Elisaha Rakotoseheno.
Source African Development Bank Group
