Our Goals, Objectives and Activities

About

The Africa Health Budget Network (AHBN) is a network of organizations and individuals using budget advocacy to improve health service delivery in Africa. AHBN’s main purpose is to advance and embed improvements in health budget allocation, spending, transparency, participation and accountability to increase overall health and wellbeing.

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:

  1. We work together to strengthen CSOs’ ability to influence health budget allocation and spending.
  2. 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.
  3. 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
  4. 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.

Our goal

AHBN’s goal is to enable African CSOs to meaningfully influence policy and public spending on health to improve the health of its people. The most meaningful health policies have little impact and are not sustainable until they are matched with sufficient public resources that are used efficiently.

The Health budget is an important piece of the health financing system, reflecting a government’s commitment to ensuring access to health and affecting the strength & sustainability of the health system.

Our objectives

It is therefore pertinent that CSOs have the requisite capacity to engage governments and political actors in an open, participatory, and accountable public budgeting and ensure that they (Governments &Political Actors) fulfill the financial commitments made in the budget to improve the health outcomes of all citizens.

AHBN works with CSO members and other partners to ensure that African leaders are committed to accountability and transparency around health budget in their various countries.

Our activities

AHBN is working with its members with the aim of fostering more open, participatory and accountable health budgeting in Africa. Leveraging on their various skills, knowledge of their country’s political context and experience of navigating policy processes to transform their country’s health budgets and bring about social change, improved health outcomes &  Sustainable development. Budget Advocacy AHBN works with CSOs to set strategic actions that influences decision making in allocation and implementation of public budget while enhancing effective use of resources, provision of services, transparency and accountability.

Capacity Building AHBN Provides advice and expertise through knowledge and experience sharing among individuals, organization & professionals to strengthen the ability of coalition members, to engage & influence their countries health budget and to improve better health spending in Africa.

Resource Centre AHBN serves as a resource center which organizations, professionals and individuals can get information and resource materials such as budget scorecards, budget infographics, and budget analysis reports and so much more.

AHBN Coordinator Profile
Our History and Organisation
Our Advisory Board