Many health systems in Africa are generally characterized by high burden of out-of-pocket payment by patients at the point of care and increased exposure of clients to catastrophic health payments. However, there are recent moves by many African countries to improve their health financing systems and institute health insurance in a bid to ensure universal health coverage. The webinar will focus on sharing experiences of implementing health insurance in the contexts of African countries. As such, the main learning objectives of the webinar are to share best practices from countries, which are at different stages of implementing health insurance and identify mitigating strategies for the challenges that may be faced in the process of implementing health insurance.

Daniel Erku will moderate the webinar and share his comparative assessment of HTA and health insurance from the Australian and Ethiopian context and what Africa countries can learn. Eskinder Eshetu Ali will present on the status of health insurance implementation in Ethiopia. He will be sharing success stories of a community-based health insurance (CBHI) system roll out for individuals and families in the rural agricultural and the urban informal sectors in Ethiopia. He will also discuss the challenges of rolling out social health insurance (SHI) for workers in the formal sector of the Country. Tienie Stander will present on the history and current system of health insurance in South Africa. His presentation will point out what the rest of the continent can learn from the health financing system in South Africa and what countries could do differently based on the challenges of the system. Peter Agyei-Baffour will share the experiences from a relatively new nationwide health insurance system in Ghana and will outline the lessons learnt in the implementation process and what other African countries can learn from this experience.

Learning Objectives

  • Gain a better understanding of the situation of the diverse healthcare financing in the Africa region.
  • Share experiences of and best practices in implementing health insurance from various countries in the region.
  • Learn how to identify effective strategies to address unforeseen challenges in the planning of insurance systems.

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