Kampala, Uganda, 31 Aug 2026: Ladies’s World Banking, a worldwide nonprofit advancing girls’s financial alternative, is launching a brand new pilot with Ripple, which builds know-how that makes worldwide funds and cash transfers quicker, simpler, and extra environment friendly, and Pula, an insurance coverage know-how firm serving smallholder farmers. Collectively, the organizations will check a brand new mannequin for delivering quicker, extra clear monetary help to roughly 3,000 smallholder farmers in Uganda’s refugee and host communities, with a deal with girls.
Uganda’s agriculture sector is extremely weak to local weather change, relying largely on rain-fed manufacturing led by smallholder farmers with restricted capability to adapt. Ladies farmers in Uganda’s refugee and host communities handle fixed dangers from local weather shocks, well being, and revenue disruption, with out dependable monetary instruments to recuperate. Ladies, refugees, and host communities depending on subsistence farming, face the best publicity to those dangers.
Local weather shocks are intensifying. Uganda is experiencing extra frequent droughts, floods, and climate-related displacement. Between 2018 and 2020 alone, local weather disasters displaced an estimated 334,000 individuals, whereas droughts and crop failures proceed to develop extra extreme and unpredictable. Ladies’s World Banking analysis exhibits that greater than 800 million girls globally lack entry to the monetary instruments wanted to obtain reduction funds throughout emergencies; in Sub-Saharan Africa, an estimated 300 million girls lack a technique to obtain emergency reduction funds after a local weather catastrophe. For girls who depend on small-scale, climate-sensitive agriculture, delayed help forces households to promote productive belongings, cut back funding of their farms, and tackle debt that undermines long-term stability.
This distinctive pilot undertaking, Harnessing Expertise for Ladies’s Monetary Resilience in Uganda, brings collectively Ladies’s World Banking’s experience in designing inclusive monetary options and measuring their influence on girls’s monetary resilience, Pula’s parametric insurance coverage design, and Ripple’s digital asset cost know-how. When a predefined shock happens, resembling drought, crop loss, or a well being emergency, payouts are triggered, and beneficiaries robotically obtain funds in Uganda shillings by cellular cash — the channel they already use and belief — with no need to file claims or watch for guide approval processes. Ripple USD (RLUSD) powers the backend settlement layer, utilizing Ripple’s digital asset cost know-how designed to become profitable transfers simpler and extra environment friendly. The settlement course of operates seamlessly within the background, enabling deposits and withdrawals to proceed usually in native foreign money. Smallholder farmers expertise a quicker, extra clear, and extra environment friendly service with no need to have interaction with or perceive the underlying settlement infrastructure.
“In Uganda, girls farmers are already managing skinny margins. A single shock, resembling a failed harvest or a well being emergency, can erase years of progress,” stated Stephen Ambore, Coverage Director- Africa, Ladies’s World Banking. “Monetary resilience powers financial alternative. When payouts arrive robotically in hours as an alternative of weeks, girls can take in shocks with out promoting belongings or taking over debt, permitting them to remain invested of their farms, companies, and households and proceed constructing long-term monetary resilience and safety. Ladies’s World Banking is dedicated to serving to girls earn extra, enhance their monetary lives, and construct resilience to local weather and well being shocks to allow them to obtain lasting financial alternative.”
“As we proceed exploring how RLUSD can help new real-world use circumstances behind the scenes, we’re excited to companion with Ladies’s World Banking and Pula, leaders in increasing financial empowerment by monetary inclusion,” stated Jonathan Perri, Director of Social Influence at Ripple. “This pilot demonstrates how programmable settlement know-how can assist automate insurance coverage payouts for farmers in Uganda when predefined situations are met, enhancing velocity and effectivity — whereas beneficiaries work together solely with the cellular cash they already know.”
Ladies’s World Banking is partnering with insurance coverage know-how agency Pula to design and ship the insurance coverage product, working in coordination with humanitarian actors on the bottom. The method combines parametric insurance coverage design with automated, technology-enabled settlement to cut back delays, improve transparency, and decrease the price of delivering payouts. Along with product design and supply, the initiative will check whether or not this mannequin improves girls’s monetary resilience in measurable methods. Utilizing the Ladies Financial Empowerment (WEE) Barometer by Ladies’s World Banking, the pilot will observe adjustments within the girls’s capability to handle shocks, their confidence in monetary decision-making, and their management over family sources.
The undertaking has three aims:
- Ship predictable, shock-responsive help—overlaying agricultural, well being, and life dangers—to girls farmers who presently lack entry to insurance coverage.
- Exhibit that automated, technology-enabled settlement reduces payout occasions and secures funds in humanitarian and monetary service supply.
- Generate proof and learnings to maneuver from pilot to scale throughout humanitarian and monetary programs.
About Ladies’s World Banking: Ladies’s World Banking is a worldwide nonprofit advancing girls’s financial alternative by working with monetary establishments and policymakers to design and scale inclusive monetary options. For over 45 years, the group has helped make finance work for ladies, reaching 118 million girls and 76 million males since 2018.
About Pula: Pula is an insurance coverage know-how and knowledge companies firm that designs and delivers agricultural insurance coverage and digital monetary merchandise for smallholder farmers throughout Africa and Asia, serving to them handle local weather and manufacturing dangers. Since its founding in 2015, Pula has reached greater than 24 million smallholder farmers, together with over 300,000 farmers in Uganda alone.
About Ripple: Based in 2012, Ripple is the main supplier of blockchain-based enterprise options throughout conventional and digital finance. Its options span international funds, custody, liquidity, and treasury administration, serving as a one-stop store for shifting, storing, exchanging, and managing worth. Ripple’s stablecoin, RLUSD, and its digital asset cost know-how allow Ripple and its prospects to ship quicker and extra environment friendly monetary companies and contribute to a extra trendy monetary system.
On this pilot, Ripple’s know-how operates solely as backend settlement infrastructure between institutional companions and isn’t provided, bought, or made accessible to beneficiaries.
For Media Queries:
Ian Burge press@ripple.com
Mabel Omurambi mo@womensworldbanking.org
