8th December, 2011
AMREF @ ICASA Day 3
With the shrinking of traditional funding sources for development of health and other sectors in Africa, it is time for the continent to rethink its strategies towards achieving national and global targets. There must be a paradigm shift from the way development programmes have traditionally been funded – with donor support from the West – to new ways of mobilising resources on the continent to meet development needs.
Addressing a press conference in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, at the ongoing International Conference on AIDS and STIs in Africa, the Director General of AMREF, Dr Teguest Guerma, said that despite the reduction in donor funding, including funding for HIV and AIDS programmes, Africa still needs to aim for Zero infections, Zero discrimination and Zero deaths.
“Donor fatigue has set in, but we must still find new ways to meet these goals,” she said, adding that donor aid often has strings attached that do not allow Africa to pursue its own priorities. “Africa must look for new and innovative ways of sustaining HIV and AIDS programmes. We must find methodologies that are homegrown and do not have rigid and expensive conditionalities.”
Dr Guerma said that one avenue of raising funds is through mobilisation of resources from within the continent. “We must put something on the table before we ask others to support us.” She cited the example of AMREF’s international Stand Up for African Mothers Campaign launched in October this year to raise awareness and funds for training more midwives in order to reduce the deaths of women and children on the continent. AMREF, she explained, would like to raise one dollar from every African. “Imagine if every African gave one dollar to this cause – we could stop very many women from dying!”
Click on the image below to view a slideshow on the ICASA conference
Dr Teguest Guerma, AMREF Director General (right) addressing the press with Dr Abebe Aberra, Programme Leader HIV/AIDS/TB , AMREF HQ
Public-private partnerships are another way to finance development, Dr Guerma said. “Africa is the next continent for new investment and new business. But here it should not be business as usual,” she declared. In the West, she said, investors grow their profits and markets through advertisements and sales, but in Africa, they must invest in the communities which they want to buy their products and services to ensure that the people are healthy, and are therefore able to work and buy their products, hence market growth. “It is about shared responsibility and shared value, a win-win situation for all.”
Dr Guerma went on to say that conventional Corporate Social Responsibility is primarily aimed at publicity and market growth for the private sector using one-off projects that do not have any real or lasting impact on the communities, but what Africa needs are models of investment in both the people and in market growth.
She cited AMREF’s eLearning course for nurses, which is a partnership between the Government of Kenya, technological consulting firm Accenture, and AMREF. Another example is the Personal Hygiene and Sanitation Programme (PHHASE), for schools, which arose from a partnership between GlaxoSmithKline, the Government of Kenya, and AMREF, and which has been replicated and scaled up in several countries in Africa and beyond.
Stressing the importance of innovation and the need to think outside the box, Dr Guerma said that AMREF, as a non-profit organisation, had turned AMREF’s Flying Doctors evacuation and air ambulance service into non-profit business to raise funds for the organisation’s activities, and more similar avenues are being sought.
She concluded with a challenge for governments to be made accountable for use of available resources. “Civil society should also be accountable in the way we use the money that comes to us for development and must pressurise governments to be more accountable,” she added. The media too, she said, has an important role in demanding accountability.
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