The National Social Insurance Fund (Caisse nationale de prévoyance sociale – CNaPS) is continuing its efforts to extend social security coverage in Madagascar. An initiative to expand awareness raising activities has become a laudable strategy in terms of its achievements. In 2014 it launched a programme for Catholic school leaders that promotes and raises awareness on the provisions of social security and of their responsibilities regarding such rights.

The issue or challenge addressed by our practice: Proclamation No. 715/2003 excluded a majority of private organization employees (definite period employees and management staff) from pension scheme coverage.

It has been recognized that a major challenge in developing countries is how to ensure that the poor are included in health financing arrangements and they can access benefit from health insurance coverage as the non-poor.

Financial institutions in Africa have successfully plugged into the mobile ecosystem and deployed services that have revolutionized service delivery, transforming customer engagement touch points and feedback mechanisms as well as enhancing responsiveness of the financial institutions. In addition to this mobile tech has enabled financial penetration. Currently Kenya has 68 per cent financial penetration through mobile tech and is at 80 per cent in use. While many Social Security services providers use mobile technology, they are still to fully leverage on its capabilities.

Prior to 2015, the National Hospital Insurance Fund (NHIF) was only offering Inpatient services to the members on a rebate system. This arrangement was still deficient in breadth for some crucial medical services required by its members, specifically, surgical care and specialized laboratory investigations. This meant that members were still incurring out-of-pocket expenditure to access advanced treatment.

As part of the introduction of health insurance for private and parastatal sector employees in June 2014, the National Health Insurance and Social Guarantee Fund (Caisse nationale d'assurance maladie et de garantie sociale – CNAMGS) initially entrusted the task of collecting contributions to the National Social Security Fund (Caisse nationale de sécurité sociale – CNSS).

The National Social Security Fund for Non-Salaried Workers (Caisse nationale de sécurité sociale des non-salariés – CASNOS) oversees the compulsory coverage of social insurance and retirement benefit risks of independent farm and non-farm workers operating in Algeria. It manages the collection of compulsory contributions.

The farming industry experienced difficult times in the 1990s, during which farmers were unable to pay their contributions, resulting in the loss of all benefits for themselves and their dependants. 

The National Hospital Insurance Fund (NHIF) has been focusing its efforts to recruit members from the informal sector in a bid to achieve Universal Health Coverage. Further, NHIF has also engaged strategic partners to cover the indigents. This meant that there was need for innovations to meet the needs of this target group. One area of concern was how NHIF would collect insurance premiums from members in the informal sector.

The National Social Security and Insurance Trust (NASSIT) was established through an Act of Parliament and is charged with the responsibility of administering the Sierra Leone Pension Scheme. NASSIT started full operations in January 2002 as a partially funded defined benefit pension plan which requires a member to contribute for at least 180 months on/before they retire at age 60 to qualify for full retirement pension.

In Madagascar, a large proportion of the population lacks access to social protection, especially rural producers. For more than a decade, government policy and legislation have foreseen the extension of social security coverage to the entire working population. However, only the scheme for salaried employees is in existence to provide such generalized social security coverage.