Financing healthcare for the poor is one major challenge facing the world’s poorest populations
in developing countries. While over 90% of the global burden of disease is borne by over
80%, only about 11% of global health spending is on the poor. Community-based health insurance
schemes (CBHIS) have emerged in Africa for mobilizing community resources. They
can also be a stepping stone to a more formal and potentially universal coverage. In parts of
Africa where such schemes exist, they have not effectively covered the target population. Nigeria
has a few such schemes. This paper uses the contingent valuation to examine the possibility
of adopting CBHIS using in-kind payments in rural Nigeria. The study finds that gender,
household size, health status, the quality of health care centers, confidence in the proposed
scheme, distance to the nearest health care center and income are major determinants of
households’ willingness to pay (WTP) for the scheme