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Breaking Foreign Aid Dependency: Building Pathways to Stronger Institutions and Locally Led, Evidence-Based Decision-Making and Accountability in Africa
October 22, 2025 @ 3:00 pm - 4:30 pm
Free 
Background
Sub-Saharan Africa’s health landscape is at a critical juncture. Declining levels of foreign assistance amid competing global crises risk stalling progress on innovations, accountability mechanisms, and sustainable financing. To safeguard recent gains and accelerate locally led solutions, stakeholders must realign strategies, forge new partnerships, and strengthen data-driven decision making at institutional and community levels. To spark this pivotal transition, EVIHDAF, FP2030, and the International Centre for Research on Women (ICRW) are co-organizing a webinar to convene cross-sector stakeholders, showcase proven approaches, and strategic pathways for scaling health innovations, mobilizing domestic resources, and strengthening accountability in West and Central Africa’s health systems.
Purpose
Engage a broad range of stakeholders on effective and efficient strategies to respond to the current funding landscape characterized by cuts in foreign assistance, with focus on accountability, scaling up of health innovations, and innovative health financing.
Target Audience
Global and regional (West & Central Africa) stakeholders including private foundations, multilateral institutions (UNFPA, UNICEF, FAO, WHO, UNDP, the World Bank, UN Women, the Global Fund, etc.), bilateral organizations (USAID, IDRC, Global Affairs Canada, etc.), multilateral initiatives (e.g., FP2030, ECOWAS, Africa CDC, WAHO, etc.), Government institutions, iNGOs (e.g., ICRW, Save the Children, PSI, Pop Council), local NGOs/CSOs, and private sector institutions.
Date
Date: October 22nd, 2025 / 2PM – 3:30PM (GMT)
Duration and platform – 90 minutes on Zoom
Our Speakers:
- Alain Damiba, MD, MPH, MBA – Keynote Speaker
Laura Ghiron is President of Partners in Expanding Health Quality and Access and a member of the ExpandNet Secretariat. She has led scaling‑up work since the late 1990s, including roles at the University of Michigan School of Public Health and collaborations with WHO, Reprolatina, and the Quality of Care Project in China. A co‑founder of ExpandNet (2003), she has co‑authored guidance, edited a book of country case studies, and provided scale‑up technical assistance across Asia, Africa, and Latin America for donors including Gates, MacArthur, Packard, and USAID. She chairs ExpandNet’s Advisory Council and leads efforts to advance the science and practice of scaling up, and to develop the open‑access Scale‑up Learning Center; resources are available at www.expandnet.net.
- Daniela C. Rodríguez, DrPH – Keynote Speaker
Dr. Daniela C. Rodríguez is a health policy and systems researcher who examines how politics, actor relationships, incentives, and evidence shape policy development and implementation. Previously a faculty member at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, she led research and evaluations on health policy, implementation, systems strengthening, and donor transition and sustainability, and contributed to teaching and mentorship programs. Daniela holds an MPH in Global Health from Emory University and a DrPH from the University of California, Berkeley. She chaired the Translating Evidence to Action Thematic Working Group of Health Systems Global from 2016 to 2021 and currently works with the Alliance for Health policy and systems research (AHPSR) on advancing evidence‑informed policy and practice.
- Laura Ghiron, MPH – Speaker
Laura Ghiron is President of Partners in Expanding Health Quality and Access and a member of the ExpandNet Secretariat. She has been working on the topic of scaling‑up since the late 1990s, including roles at the University of Michigan School of Public Health in collaboration with numerous countries and projects. Having helped establish ExpandNet in 2003, she has co‑authored several guidance tools, a book of country case studies, and numerous publications as well as providing scale‑up-related TA across Asia, Africa, and Latin America.
- Cheikh Seck, MD, PHS – Speaker
Dr. Cheikh Seck is a public health physician with over 25 years’ experience leading maternal, child, adolescent, and reproductive health programs in Francophone West Africa. He directs Horizon Santé and has supported the scale up of proven innovations, notably co-leading Senegal’s Urban Reproductive Health Initiative (ISSU) which piloted the Informed Push Model for drug procurement, which was adopted nationally. He has collaborated with many countries and institutions to build scaling capacity using the ExpandNet approach.
- Owen Smith, PhD – Speaker
Owen Smith is a Lead Economist in the World Bank’s Health, Nutrition and Population Global Practice currently based in Accra, Ghana. Since joining the Bank in 2005, he has worked on health financing and policy across Europe & Central Asia, South Asia, and West & Central Africa. He co‑authored Getting Better: Improving Health System Outcomes in Europe and Central Asia and Going Universal: How 24 Countries are Implementing Universal Health Coverage, and recently co‑led Future Fit: West & Central Africa HNP Strategy. Prior to the World Bank, he was a health economist at Abt Associates and a macroeconomist with the Department of Finance Canada.
- Yonette Thomas, PhD – Moderator
Dr. Thomas is founder and CEO of UrbanHealth360, an INGO that connects urbanization science with community health engagement. She is a Visiting Associate Professor in the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health and Justice at Rutgers School of Public Health and was a Dean’s Senior Scholar at the University of Memphis. Her prior leadership roles include founding executive director of the International Society for Urban Health, science advisor for urban health at the New York Academy of Medicine, vice president for research compliance at Howard University, and chief of Epidemiology at the National Institute on Drug Abuse. She serves on the boards of Women’s Economic Imperative and LVCT Health and has published widely on urbanization, social epidemiology, and the environment–health nexus.
Format (90mn) – Simultaneous interpretation (English French)
1- Welcome (10mn), Jean Christophe Fotso, EVIHDAF, Cameroon & USA
2- Opening keynote addresses (15mn)
Alain Damiba, Managing Director, FP2030 NWCA Hub, Abuja, Nigeria
Daniela Rodriguez, Scientist (Implementation Research), WHO, Geneva
3- Bringing health innovations at scale (15mn)
Laura Ghiron, President, ExpandNet, USA
Cheikh Seck, Advisor, ExpandNet, Dakar, Senegal
4- Innovative, locally led health financing (10mn)
Owen Smith, Lead Economist, The World Bank Group, Accra Ghana
5- Interactive Questions & Answers (30mn)
6- Closing (10mn)
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