A closer look
Tech optimists assumed African farmers would eagerly buy weather insurance via text message, but they were completely wrong. Companies rolled out index-based microinsurance, where payouts trigger automatically based on satellite data rather than human adjusters. The problem? The satellites frequently misread the ground conditions. Farmers would watch their crops wither in a localized drought, but because the satellite saw a green patch a few miles away, the algorithm refused to pay out. The farmers logically realized that paying premiums into a flawed digital black box was a worse gamble than the weather itself.
