The African Insurance Organisation (AIO) has suggested that without better data systems, shared standards and the analytical capacity to translate information into insight, insurers cannot price risk accurately, leaving households and enterprises across the continent exposed to shocks that may erode years of development gains.
This is according to the AIO’s annual flagship publication, Africa Insurance Pulse 2026, prepared by Faber Consulting, examining how data-driven insurance can catalyse inclusive growth across Africa.
According to the report, Africa’s insurance protection gap is not just a capital gap; it is also a data gap.
Jean Baptiste Ntukamazina, Secretary General of the AIO, explained that this is preventing firms from reaching underserved communities or expanding their business models.
Ntukamazina added, “Closing this gap is both an institutional and technical task, requiring investment, governance and genuine collaboration among public and private sectors.
“The stakes extend well beyond the industry itself: data-driven insurance is part of the economic infrastructure that improves resilience and enables inclusive growth.”
Providing an example of data scarcity, the report observed that non-life penetration, which indicates how extensively insurance is used to transfer risk within an economy, remains well below global benchmarks across the continent.
Even South Africa, the most advanced market, records only 2.3% of GDP, compared with a global average of 4%, while lower-income markets lack the data systems needed to expand risk protection and attract investment.
The AIO said that without credible, granular data, actuarial modelling becomes uncertain, technical pricing requires high safety margins, and reinsurance costs rise, making protection either unavailable or unaffordable for the populations that need it most.
The report continued, “The gap between what the industry needs and what it has is, by its own account, vast. Organisations depend mainly on their own proprietary data and on public regulatory sources for external comparisons, while access to and adoption of alternative and third-party data, which could significantly improve risk insights, remains limited.
“The consequences for market development are measurable and mutually reinforcing. For insurance markets, mispricing was the most cited impact, followed by reduced underwriting appetite, difficult access to reinsurance and capital markets, and progressively restrictive terms.
“For reinsurance markets specifically, data gaps force higher rates, tighter conditions, and elevated attachment points, effectively pricing African insurers out of efficient risk-transfer solutions.”
Elsewhere in the report, the AIO noted that a “critical and underappreciated” dimension of this challenge is the role of mobile money.
It went on, “Across low-income African countries, mobile financial ecosystems have achieved penetration rates that far outstrip traditional banking, in several markets reaching close to half the adult population. This digital infrastructure has quietly created a data asset of enormous potential for insurance markets.
“Insurance growth in Africa depends on integrating into these mobile-led ecosystems rather than waiting for conventional banking models to mature. Where this integration has occurred, previously uninsurable populations have been reached at scale, demonstrating that the protection gap is, in substantial part, a data infrastructure gap.”
The findings of the Africa Insurance Pulse 2026 are based on a structured survey with insurers, reinsurers and brokers operating in Africa, conducted from March to April 2026.
