We are glad to announce that the first university course about microinsurance in developing countries, focussing on Micro Health Insurance in Africa, is being implemented since October 2009 at University of Cologne. The teaching modules, developed in the scope of the curriculum of the Pro MHI Africa project, will be hence implemented for the first time. A common evaluation of the newly developed modules will follow after the course, which is existing of many interactive and participative elements and tools that can be regarded as innovative and new in the field of microinsurance. The curriculum will furthermore be implemented in the cooperating Universities of Botswana, Ghana and Malawi by the beginning of 2010 and will constantly be evaluated and further developed to guarantee a sustainable outreach and impact of these modules to students in Europe and Africa.

• For more information about the curriculum, please visit: www.microhealthinsurance-africa.org/curriculum_development.html

Based on the success of the OIKOS lecture on microinsurance in December 2008, microinsurance was selected as topic in two subsequent sessions. In the first week, Philipp Degens and Gerald Leppert from the Pro MHI Africa team Cologne were invited to give a lecture in the OIKOS cycle on "Sustainable development -- public and private approaches". The presentation focused on basics of microinsurance and on teached the background for critical thinking on the developments in microinsurance. In the second week, Martin Hintz, PhD student from the University of Passau and former project leader in a microinsurance project of Allianz insurance company in Indonesia, gave insights in the development of microinsurance within a public private partnership. The presentation of the Pro MHI Africa team members (in German) is available HERE.

We are glad to announce that the Pro MHI Africa University Network is now member of the international Microinsurance Network. The mission of the Microinsurance Network is to promote the development and proliferation of good-value insurance products for low-income persons by providing a platform for information sharing and stakeholder coordination.
On 1st of April three members of Pro MHI Africa joined a common workshop of the Microinsurance Network on "Performance Indicators of Microinsurance" in Brussels.

• For further information on the Microinsurance Network please visit: http://www.microinsurancenetwork.org/
• Please find the Handbook of Performance Indicators of Microinsurance as well as other important toolkits and workshop announcements here: www.microfact.org/microinsurance-tools/microinsurance-handbook/

Philipp Degens and Lisa-Marie Rohrdantz were invited by the Faculty of Business of University of Botswana (UB) to join the official Research Day 2009. It was a pleasure for them to present the Pro MHI Africa Project in this context and hence use this opportunity to inform UB-students as well as staff and interested guest researchers about the project and the ongoing project activities. Furthermore they brought up the topic of micro health insurance within an international research context which was appreciated a lot by the audience.

• Please find their presentation here

The German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) published a feature in German language on the project Pro-MHI-Africa in the recently released DAAD euroletter Nr. 40 (December 2008). The DAAD euroletter is available as print version, but also online.

The project Pro-MHI-Africa was invited to give a speech on the International Symposium on Risk and Africa in Bayreuth, Germany, from the 27th to 29th of November 2008. The interdisciplinary symposium (geography, sociology, economy, social anthropology, ecology, etc.) aimed at conceptualising risk in Africa addressing the challenge of making theoretical and methodological advances in risk research relevant to an understanding of processes of social change in the continent. The presentation concentrated on (micro-)insurance as one particular element of household’s risk management strategies and focused on the evidence and challenges of Microinsurance in Sub-Saharan Africa. The presentation (in English) is available here.

• The Pro MHI Africa project team submitted a paper on “Financing health care - the role of micro health insurance in Sub-Saharan Africa” which will be available as soon as it is accepted.

A new publication of the German Journal of Cooperative Studies, Zeitschrift für das gesamte Genossenschaftswesen (ZfgG), was just published by Prof. Hans Jürgen Rösner, professor for social policy at the Department for Social Policy and director of the Department for Cooperative Studies of the University of Cologne as well as backstopping expert within the Pro MHI Africa project. The special edition of this journal deals with different aspects of risk management through cooperative self help in developing countries.

Unfortunately the special edition is only available in German, but contains also English contributions. Please find below the titles of the different articles in English translation:

1. Ulrich Fehl: Risk and economical development
2. Hans Jürgen Rösner: Risk management strategies for poor population groups in rural areas
3. Hans Dieter Seibel: Changing patterns of risk management in savings and credit in Nigeria
4. Ralf Radermacher: Cooperative micro health insurance - potencial and approaches of advancement
5. Eberhard Seiler: Cooperative selfhelp within risk management of natural disasters
6. Johannes Blome-Drees/Jasper Peters/Philipp Degens: Cooperative unions and risk management of primary cooperatives
7. Paul Armbruster/Nina Molitor: Decrease of member risks through measured regulation
8. Gerald Leppert/Verena Müller: Contributions of participation in cooperative risk management

• The journal can be ordered at the Department of Cooperative Studies at the University of Cologne
• Please find attached the official announcement of the latest ZfgG-Special Edition

The kick-off meeting at the University of Ghana in Legon/Accra has been a success. The team members from all four partner universities joined hands and planned the programme for the next two years of cooperation. The most important part of the Kick-off meeting was detailed planning of all steps and tasks making use of the Metaplan method.

The meeting served as an introduction into the project details as well as a platform for the team members to become acquainted with each other. In rotating workshops the team members discussed relevant aspects on micro health insurance and the method of project planning. In a next step the lack of data and knowledge on micro health insurance in the three countries and curriculum development in this domain was identified in the plenum. Research topics and tools were defined as well as intensive discussions about the composition of the micro insurance diploma and how to integrate it in existing programmes took place. Each team gave a presentation on their university and research topics during the meeting. Furthermore presentations about each country’s health care system were held.

This highly participatory approach allowed each team member to be strongly involved in planning and deciding on each step for the activities shown in the proposal of the project and beyond. Each step has been thoroughly analyzed by the project team whether and how it contributes to the project’s objectives.

The project team is pleased to announce the start of the project Pro MHI Africa. Please see the official press release. The project was excited about the broad media coverage of the press release in international media and online-media, e.g. Accra Mail, Africa-Live, Medicalnewstoday, and Modern Ghana.

Several interviews lead to two publications on the project. The local student online-magazine Campus-Web published a short article on the project (in German language). The Newspaper of the University of Cologne (KUZ) published an article on the project in detail.