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Chapitre D'ouvrage Année : 2023

“Top up your healthcare access”. Mobile money to finance healthcare in sub-Saharan Africa

Résumé

Many healthcare actors, as well as Telecommunication Operators (Telcos), have promoted the potential benefits of mobile-based projects to improve the financial accessibility of healthcare in developing countries. Such programs have particularly flourished in Africa in the past years through mobile money services. In developing countries, where banking enrolment is low, mobile banking services can allow individuals to pay health expenses via mobile money. These services promise the first healthcare coverage to Africans, thus shedding light on the lack of a welfare state. Because mobile markets in Africa are dominated by prepaid users – 90% of customers buy credit as they go, and repeatedly switch operators – mobile-based health insurance is strongly related to the construction of sustainable and profitable mobile markets in a competitive and unstable African context. Based on qualitative research done in Kenya, this paper analyzes strategies and challenges that characterize these programs, and highlights the market implications that make them rise and shine, or collapse in a day. It also underlines the construction of new financial circuits to sustain such brand-new forms of social protection, and the increased implication of private actors from the digital sector in the design of health policies.
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Dates et versions

hal-04038572 , version 1 (21-03-2023)

Identifiants

  • HAL Id : hal-04038572 , version 1

Citer

Marine Al Dahdah. “Top up your healthcare access”. Mobile money to finance healthcare in sub-Saharan Africa. Financializations of Development, 2023, 9781003039679. ⟨hal-04038572⟩
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