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Regional mapping in West and Central Africa is helping find public-private partnerships opportunities in the global health supply chain.

As the countries of West and Central Africa struggle with ongoing health challenges such as a recent Ebola outbreak, one of the highest HIV/AIDS burdens in the world, and a fractured health infrastructure, many actors in the health supply chain remain unaware of what organizations and private companies already exist to provide valuable global health supply chain services in the region. Without an adequate understanding of providers and the services they offer, funders and implementers alike are unable to make informed decisions in provider selection and miss out on valuable opportunities for collaboration and information sharing. This is why the USAID Global Health Supply Chain – Technical Assistance (GHSC-TA) Francophone Task Order (TO) is developing tools to address the region’s supply chain challenges by mapping potential partners in the region and helping the public and the private sector find each other.

Prior to some of the recent efforts, there was no available mapping of the private sector capacity in various countries in the West Africa region that could be leveraged to promote sustainable supply chain systems. To make matters worse, the health supply chain in the region is heavily reliant on the public sector and international organizations, excluding the untapped potential of the private sector to solve some of the health and supply chain challenges in the region.

The current framework is also fragmented at the central level between the three disease programs, HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, and malaria, and it creates an unnecessary burden on health service delivery functions at the regional, district, and facility levels, due to uncoordinated requests for financial reporting and data, leading to oversight across supply chain activities. Identifying the health supply chain service gaps in each country allows public sector actors and implementing partners to meet the need for technical assistance and private sector strengthening for each country, which is why mapping them to get an idea of where they are and what they can offer is so important.

Mapping Uncharted Territory  

The first step to building these tools is understanding the specifics of the existing health supply chain networks, the entities responsible for healthcare procurement in the public sector, and key stakeholders including other public sector actors like other NGOs. The GHSC-TA Francophone TO also identified key private sector players like TEDIS Pharma, Merck, and Bolloré that work with the public sector. These stakeholders have a presence in the region and can therefore contribute to capacity building when providing public sector services because they hire local staff for implementation. The project identified these by doing desk research and asking regional partners and initiatives like the Association of Central African Purchases of Essential Medicines (ACAME) and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation-funded Africa Resource Centre (ARC).