The campaign which is currently running for the next 5 months aims to create awareness (at a larger scale) and buy-in about priorities identified by African Constituencies , and ultimately influence the inclusion of the same in the next Global Fund Strategy; These priorities or ‘’top asks’’ have emerged from the open consultations organized by the Bureau Eight weeks of intense engagement with more than 500 African delegates and partners around 15 thematic namely:
Malaria Resurgence, RSSH: PSM & Market Shaping, RSSH: Governance & Leadership, RSSH: HRH & CSS, Health Security& Covid-19, TB Missing cases, Addressing HIV prevention & AGYW, Climate Change & Environment vis-à-vis ATM, Equity, Gender & Human rights, RSSH: Health Information, Addressing HIV prevention including KVPs, Displacement, Fragility & Instability, DRM, Anti-Microbial Resistance, Comorbidities with NCDs & demographic shifts.
The African continent, with around 16% of the global population, 24% of the global burden of disease and 1% of global health expenditure, is critical to the global community’s vision of attaining universal health coverage (UHC) and ending HIV, TB and malaria by 2030. Perhaps no area of health is this truer than on the HIV, Tuberculosis and malaria front, where the continent is the epicenter of these epidemics with around 70%, 25% and 90%, respectively, of the global burden. The attainment of the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) number three – healthy lives and wellbeing for all – including ending HIV, TB and malaria by 2030, therefore, will have to be fought and won largely on the African continent. Currently the Global Fund is leading the consultative process to develop its post-2022 strategy. it is therefore critical that the focus on the African continent is sustained for impact and to ensure the gain made hitherto in the HIV/AIDS, TB and Malaria responses are sustained.
The African voice for Global Fund Campaign advocacy messages depicting the aforementioned African constituency ‘’top asks’’ for the post-2022 Global Fund strategy are as follows :
Focus on HIV, Tuberculosis, and malaria as the Global Fund’s core mandate;
2. Strengthen Resilient and Sustainable Systems for Health (RSSH), including community systems which would then contribute to Global Health Security;
3. Address Human Rights, Gender and Equity
4. Reorient partnerships to optimize the GF ability to achieve its ambitious mission amid unique challenges
5. Support the West & Central Africa region in improving performance.
It is therefore, hoped that the launch last December and subsequent implementation period of the campaign over the next few months would continue to leverage ACB constituencies’ voices towards other constituencies, CSOs, UN agencies, Policy Makers, and amplify Africa’s voice through the mass media and various policy spaces. Through this campaign top asks, ACB is also encouraging Policy Makers at various levels of governance and influence, to seriously start seeking for more information and analytically think through, on how these Africa ‘top asks’ towards the next GF Strategy development can effectively be addressed, so that the desired results that Africa wants from this process are indeed implemented.
