AHBN was envisioned in 2006, founded in 2013 and launched at the 2014 PMNCH Partners Forum in Johannesburg, South Africa. It was founded to respond to a gap in civil society participation in health budget advocacy across Africa and the need for an African led and African based organization dedicated to health budget advocacy. The AHBN secretariat ‘Africa Health Budget Initiative’ is registered and incorporated in the Federal Republic of Nigeria with registration number RC 119436. It is located on 9 Berbera Street, Wuse Zone 6, and Abuja, Nigeria.
AHBN is a founding member of the Global Civil Society Coordinating Group for the Global Financing Facility and co-chair of its Finance Working Group. It is also a member of the CSOs’ Constituency of the Partnership for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health (PMNCH).
4 key things differentiate AHBN from others in the field:
- We work together to strengthen CSOs’ ability to influence health budget allocation and spending.
- We connect local realities and global debates to advance progress towards Universal Health Coverage. AHBN enables a 2-way information flow between CSOs and global and regional stakeholders.
- We combine expertise in health financing, budget analysis and evidence-based advocacy to provide tailored technical support from experts within our secretariat, and facilitating knowledge sharing across our members
- We offer our members targeted materials that communicate health budget in a concise and compelling way. With support from our secretariat ‘Community Health and Research Initiative (CHR)’ , we bring expertise in developing infographics and evidence-based communication products which can be used by members for advocacy, to drive accountability for health financing decision, and to support communication with decision makers at country and regional level.