Local Funding for Family Planning and Accountability
Nigeria
By Sara Gómez
The Africa Health Budget Network made its commitment with FP2030 in 2022 and was instrumental in supporting the government of Nigeria to make a commitment, too. AHBN’s story is a great example of how local nonprofits can work with governments to drive progress on family planning.
AHBN, a regional group that uses budget advocacy to influence health spending and improve transparency and accountability, worked with the Nigerian Ministry of Health (MoH) to develop an initial framework for its FP2030 commitment and continues to monitor progress on reproductive health and family planning.
One of AHBN’s recent wins was to ensure that the Nigerian government committed $4 million USD to fund local family planning commodities. Leading up to commitment, AHBN organized regular meetings with the MoH and engaged with the ministers of health via supporting regular press briefings including engaging the national media to provide regular updates to the public to ensure accountability.
We played a critical role in shaping the agenda of the Nigeria’s FP2030 commitment to ensure that [it] prioritized accountability and transparency and also prioritized innovative health financing.
Dr. Aminu Magashi Garba
Founder and Coordinator of the Africa Health Budget Network
“One of the motivations for AHBN to make the commitment is because we were part of the FP2020 journey. And we have seen the value of FP2020 in helping Nigeria and African countries to commit to pay some funding for contraceptives and commodities procurement and distribution at the county level. We happened to be in that journey for five years in Nigeria, in FP2020, doing advocacy, engaging government, developing a scorecard, using the motion tracker to track progress …
“So it makes it easy for us to see that we need to continue because we are seeing the value and the role of advocacy and accountability and transparency in ensuring that the right thing is done, and in mobilizing our government to promote family planning, which is a good investment, to reduce maternal mortality, to improve the chance of survival for our children, and also to reduce under 5 mortality.
“We are a nongovernmental organization. We’re not a donor partner. And we’re also not an international NGO. We’re an NGO registered in Nigeria. So, we don’t have a lot of funding, we have very little resources for advocacy. We exist in a larger landscape of big donors, and big international NGOs. So that on its own is a challenge …
“But we are not deterred. You know, we are resilient. And we are convinced we are doing the right thing. So those challenges, we turn them into opportunities to say, ‘Yes, we are small, we don’t have big funding, but we have the big passion to ensure that the country gets it right.’
“AHBN’s commitment with FP2030 has helped us to make more connections and more partnerships. Because of our interest in family planning health care financing, we were invited to join [FP2030’s] advocacy and accountability steering group. … It has enhanced our global and regional presence, and our collaboration with other partners to continue to learn — cross learning and evaluation and monitoring — across Africa and also engaging with the global partners. … Our commitment making has really given us more exposure.”
