LThe Education and Solidarity Network has reached the end of its mission to support the Burkinabe education unions in the process of creating a mutual insurance company for professionals attached to the Ministry of National Education and Literacy (MENA) of Burkina Faso. Over a period of more than ten years, it has been able to mobilise significant resources and regional and international expertise, and has thus contributed to creating the conditions for the launch and viability of this project.
As a reminder, MENA’s mutual insurance project aims to broaden social health protection by covering Burkina Faso’s education professionals throughout the country as well as their families. It also aims to raise awareness among students, parents and communities in an effort to promote social mutuals among the population in Burkina Faso. The aim is for this mutual insurance company to be able to manage the compulsory scheme for its members and also to offer them a complementary scheme.
This project brought together a consortium of international (ESN, MGEN, Solidaris), regional (PASS, MUPEMENET, SIGEM) and national (Burkinabe government, Burkinabe mutualist movement, Burkinabe education unions) actors who made their experience and expertise available to ensure its sustainability.
Since 2009, the ESN’s work has taken several forms: support for project management, financing of activities and fundraising, creation of a team of experts, organisation of working sessions between partners, and carrying out training activities and workshops to raise awareness of mutuality among Burkinabe activists in the field.
Despite the many obstacles encountered over the years, the strength of this project has been the follow-up by diverse, qualified, committed and persevering actors, allowing today the framework of the mutual to be sufficiently defined to allow its launch.
However, the project is now on the back burner and suffers from setbacks, notably linked to the difficulty of maintaining the mobilisation of local partners. In addition, it is clear that the mutual insurance project has little impact on the local target population despite its long history.
After a decade of action and networking, the ESN has now reached the end of its ability to contribute to this project. A summary was produced in order to capitalise on this experience by proposing an analysis and retrospective of all the actions carried out by the partners in this creation process.
This summary was shared with the local and regional stakeholders of the project, so that they could add their amendments and analyses. Moreover, the last exchanges of the ESN with the Burkinabe actors were followed by a resumption of exchanges between the local partners with multiple meetings organised between the MAADO (Burkina customs mutual insurance company – partner of the project), the SNEAB (member of the ESN and representative of the education trade unions carrying the project) and the other Burkinabe education trade unions in order to envisage the next steps for the project.
The ESN maintains a link with the partners on the ground and is staying informed of their progress. It will continue to make any useful information that could facilitate the relaunch of their work on this project available.
