The instruments that move African health innovation
Classical funding models are outdated and clear gaps in funding instruments exist. This is what AHRIFF funders are building instead — and where they are looking for co-investors.
Why good science stalls before it reaches a market
Innovators and manufacturers in Africa have limited access to sustainable money, which leaves them in the valley of death far longer than their peers elsewhere. Pockets of excellence without a scaling pathway produce a persistent gap between product development and adoption.
The picture got harder in 2025. US public funders are among the largest financiers of infectious disease research, and their withdrawal exposes research continuity across Nigeria, the DRC, Kenya, South Africa, Mali, Madagascar, Malawi and Zambia. At the same time, several bilateral funders are phasing out grants in favour of market-based instruments in a smaller set of countries.
The response the Forum keeps returning to is not more money on the same terms. It is a wider set of instruments, deployed by funders who know what each other is doing.
Non-USD based investments are the goal, with grants, equity and debt playing different roles depending on where a business sits — pre-revenue, post-revenue or profitable. Funding and donor priority misalignment undermines local industry.
Harmonisation of regulatory agencies remains critical, with the African Medicines Agency at the centre of it. Without it, a product approved in one market has to start again in the next.
Advanced commitments for purchasing wherever possible — through governments, the private sector and developing insurance schemes — are what turn a manufacturing plan into a financeable one.
Accelerating implementation of the African Continental Free Trade Agreement is a precondition for the scale that local manufacturers need to be viable.
The funding spectrum
Different instruments do different jobs. The persistent failure in African health financing is not the absence of any one of them, but the absence of a handover between them.
Priority investment areas
Drawn from the sessions, call-to-action votes and delegate polls of the 2025 Forum.
A constant pillar of AHRIFF since 2022, with a standing community of practice working with Unitaid and multiple ecosystem builders. The blockers are regulatory harmonisation, AfCFTA implementation and advance purchase commitments — not scientific capability.
The NCD burden is growing quickly in Africa, but the pattern is not reflected in funding agendas set outside the continent. Prevention research and the integration of AI and big data were the two most popular funding priorities in the delegate poll.
Little clinical trial or post-marketing surveillance work has historically been done in Africa. Investment should focus on building population data for translational pipelines, coordinated through frameworks such as the EU–Africa PerMed project.
The Africa CDC Pathogen Genomics Initiative represents a sizeable existing investment in training and surveillance capability. For funders looking to drive genomic surveillance in Africa, there is no need to duplicate it.
LifeArc has refocused its strategy on AMR, spanning the PACE preclinical programme, new therapies for drug-resistant infections, diagnostics and devices, and the Fleming Fund.
The $525M Beginnings Fund pools 14 named funders and several anonymous donors to strengthen health systems, scale evidence-based care and improve access around childbirth.
The END Fund directs philanthropic capital into mass drug administration and health system strengthening for intestinal worms, river blindness, trachoma and lymphatic filariasis.
Global funders have pivoted sharply towards AI, creating a complicated matrix of activities in Africa. The talent pool exists — AIMS runs a residential MSc with Google DeepMind where 4,000 applicants compete for 40 places.
Pooling capital instead of competing with it
The Beginnings Fund is the clearest example to come out of recent AHRIFF discussions: a $525M pooled fund created by a collaboration of major global health funders to accelerate maternal and newborn survival in Africa.
It works because the funders agreed the priorities before the money moved, targeting high-burden regions and coordinating closely with governments and local partners rather than each running a parallel programme
- Fourteen named funders plus several anonymous donors behind one instrument.
- Priorities set jointly, before allocation.
- Delivery coordinated with governments and local partners.
- Measured against reductions in mortality, not activity.
Africa Pooled Procurement Mechanism
Leveraged to create scalable, sustainable demand — the precondition for any manufacturer building capacity on the continent.
Faith-based medical schemes
Piloting pooled procurement with the private sector and faith-based schemes emerged as a viable route to catalysing demand guarantees.
New chemical entities
Support for NCEs facing single-source supply, limited policy support and higher initial prices than the treatments they replace.
Platforms already built
One of the most repeated messages of the 2025 Forum: understand what exists before funding it again. These are programmes with sizeable investment already in place that new funders can leverage.
Genomic surveillance capability and training across the continent.
Medicinal chemistry training and drug discovery capacity in African institutions.
A collaborative training project building African drug discovery expertise.
Online training, the Global Health Mentorship Programme and an API manufacturing programme.
An AI-enabled platform mapping the connected ecosystem for clinical research across Africa.
A long-standing coordination network for research capacity funders.
