By Mavis Mainu, Senior Advisor, Global Shield Secretariat
From 8 to 9 June 2026, the Global Shield Secretariat and the Centre of Excellence on Gender-smart Solutions (CoE), in collaboration with Rwanda’s Ministry in Charge of Emergency Management (MINEMA) and the Ministry of Gender and Family Promotion (MIGEPROF) gathered stakeholders in Kigali for an introductory training on gender and Climate and Disaster Risk Finance and Insurance (CDRFI).
The workshop formed part of the Global Shield’s response activities under Rwanda’s Request for Support and focused on a central question: how can climate and disaster risk finance better reach the people who need it most? Over two days, participants explored how Rwanda’s existing gender policies can be linked to CDRFI-related policies, programmes, and instruments, how to design gender-responsive contingency plans and how stakeholder inputs can strengthen current and future CDRFI initiatives, including through engagement with the private sector and civil society.
The workshop began with an interactive exercise that illustrated unequal access to climate resilience financing. Participants received envelopes containing different hypothetical amounts of money to invest in resilience-building options, including climate risk insurance, savings, or no investment. Some participants had enough to buy insurance individually, while others pooled their resources to purchase a group policy. The exercise sparked discussion on how people with fewer resources—such as low-income women, people with disabilities, and other marginalized groups—often have fewer options to prepare for climate shocks. It also highlighted the importance of designing climate risk insurance products with multiple price points and accessible group-based options.
“Inclusive systems are not just more equitable but also more effective.”
Opening the workshop, Adalbert Rukebanuka, Director General of Policy, Planning and Risk Reduction at MINEMA, emphasized that inclusive systems are “not just more equitable but also more effective.” He encouraged participants to ensure that inclusion and gender responsiveness remain central to any resilience and financial protection efforts.
A key part of the workshop focused on Rwanda’s gender and CDRFI policy landscape. Mavis Mainu, Senior Advisor from the Global Shield Secretariat, presented the Global Shield mandate and Rwanda’s in-country process, including findings from the stocktake, gap analysis, and gender analysis. While participants recognized Rwanda’s strong progress on gender equality, they also identified areas where further work is needed in the emerging CDRFI field. These included strengthening evidence and data, translating policy into implementation, addressing social norms and structural barriers, and closing financial literacy gaps affecting women and youth.
Participants also stressed the need for better coordination of gender, climate, and disaster risk data. Relevant information is currently held across different institutions, making coordination essential for evidence-based decision-making. MIGEPROF’s presentation on Rwanda’s National Gender Policy further emphasized that vulnerability is shaped not simply by being a woman or man, but by social norms, roles, responsibilities, and barriers that affect people’s exposure, access to resources, and ability to respond to shocks.
The training then moved from concepts to practical application. Through group exercises using fictional personas, participants examined how climate and disaster risks differ depending on age, gender, disability, livelihood, income, location, care responsibilities, and access to information. Discussions showed that vulnerability is not always obvious. An elderly widow without a phone may miss early warning messages; a young man may face food insecurity, stress, or family conflict during drought; and a business owner may face disrupted supply chains, staff impacts, infrastructure damage, or loan repayment challenges.
Another session explored gender-related barriers across the climate risk insurance value chain. Participants discussed issues such as limited phone ownership, time constraints, transport barriers, asset ownership requirements, limited access to information, and concerns linked to digital payments. The National Agricultural Insurance Scheme served as a practical case study. Launched in 2019, the scheme targets livestock and crop farmers and has expanded to crops including rice, maize, potatoes, cassava, soya beans, and chili. Participants discussed how the scheme can better reach women and youth through community-based outreach, appropriate timing of information sessions, stronger consultation with women farmers, and partnerships with insurers, banks, telecoms companies, and local actors.
On the second day, participants focused on gender-responsive contingency planning, including guidance linked to the African Risk Capacity. Working in groups, they considered how gender-related information could be integrated into contingency plans. For country and drought context sections, they identified the importance of including demographic profiles, livelihood differences, historical drought impacts, water and sanitation issues, early warning access, and the needs of people with disabilities and children. For vulnerability assessment and targeting, they emphasized age-, gender-, and disability-disaggregated data, as well as understanding the capacities and needs of groups such as youth, teen mothers, older people, and people with disabilities. For cash transfer procedures, they discussed accessible payment channels, avoiding beneficiary fees, and offering options such as mobile money, SACCOs, cooperatives, or banks.
The final technical session focused on gender-smart monitoring and evaluation. Participants identified data that policymakers, insurance supervisors, and macro-level climate risk insurance policyholders could collect to assess access, usage, and benefits. Suggested data points included sex-, age-, and disability-disaggregated information on policyholders, beneficiaries, payouts, premium amounts, sums insured, subsidy values, payment channels, product uptake trends, and how payouts are used. They also emphasized safe and inclusive data collection methods, including separate discussion groups where appropriate, grievance mechanisms, and attention to whether beneficiaries experienced harm when accessing payouts.
The workshop generated practical recommendations for next steps. These included using the workshop outcomes to inform gender mainstreaming within Rwanda’s Support Package, recommendations for a gender strategy for the National Agricultural Insurance Scheme, embedding demand-side consultations with women farmers in climate risk insurance solution and policy design, and rolling out further training on micro- and meso-level climate risk insurance models for non-financial stakeholders and development partners.
By combining policy dialogue, interactive exercises, and stakeholder input, the training marked an important step in advancing gender-responsive CDRFI in Rwanda. It reinforced that effective climate and disaster risk finance and insurance must be designed around people’s real experiences of risk, access, and resilience. As Rwanda continues to strengthen its climate and disaster risk financing systems, integrating gender considerations will be essential to ensuring that financial protection reaches those most at risk and contributes to more inclusive, equitable, and resilient outcomes.
