Resource Type: Case Studies
Authors: Health Finance and Governance (HFG)
Published: 10/31/2015

Resource Description:

This case study is one of 14 case studies profiled in the Mobile Money for Health Case Study Compendium.

As part of a national commitment to work towards achieving universal health coverage, Mali is scaling-up a network of community based health insurance schemes, otherwise referred to as mutuelles. The mutuelles currently cover 4% of the population. A major challenge faced by the mutuelles is collection and management of membership contributions. The Government of Mali subsidizes 50% of the membership contribution for many members, but even the subsidized premium is expensive for Mali’s poorest. In June 2011, managers of Union Technique de la Mutualité Malienne (UTM) attended a workshop in Mombasa, Kenya, where they learned about the Kenya National Hospital Insurance Fund’s (NHIF) use of M-Pesa, the well-known payment platform, to collect health insurance premiums from informal sector populations. Union Technique de la Mutualité Malienne (UTM) is one of the largest associations of Mutuelle Health Organizations in Mali. UTM worked with Orange Telecommunications to design a mobile money payment system for collecting mutuelle membership contributions. UTM launched the mobile money application within all of Mali’s mutuelles in September 2013.