The R4 Rural Resilience Initiative (R4) is a strategic partnership between Oxfam America (OA) and the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP). R4 was initiated in 2011 to respond to the challenges faced by food-insecure communities enduring increasingly frequent and intense climate disasters and other shocks. The program builds on the initial success of HARITA (Horn of Africa Risk Transfer for Adaptation), an integrated risk management framework developed by Oxfam America, the Relief Society of Tigray (REST), Ethiopian farmers and several other national and global partners.
2017 marked important progress in R4 with expansion to two additinal countries - Kenya and Zimbabawe. A total of 57,625 farmers (50 percent women) participated directly in R4 while around 300,000 people benefited from it in five countries, namely, Ethiopia, Senegal, Malawi, Kenya and Zambia with its comprehensive risk management approach. The report presents progress made between January to December 2017, and summarizes the key lessons and findings from country-level evaulations.