In Africa, financing remains the largest systemic barrier to scaling and sustaining quality community health services, and there is an estimated $4.4 billion annual funding gap for community health on the continent. Further, the majority of existing funding in the region is directed towards vertical, disease-specific community health worker programs, despite strong evidence for the efficacy and cost-effectiveness of integrated programs.

To help close the community health funding gap, Last Mile Health co-launched Africa Frontline First under the championship of H.E. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and alongside Community Health Impact Coalition and Financing Alliance for Health.

To meet the promise of professionalized community health workers—and drive progress toward universal health coverage, pandemic preparedness and response, and gender equity—we must radically transform community health financing. Africa Frontline First aims to achieve this by employing innovative financing solutions to catalyze $2 billion by 2030, enabling 200,000 professionalized health workers to serve 100 million people across 10 countries.

Africa Frontline First will provide the technical expertise and support national governments need as they build community health systems that can deliver effective, efficient, and equitable healthcare. We’ll do this through a focus on financing, political championship, and deep partnership with country leaders.

To help close the community health funding gap, Last Mile Health co-launched Africa Frontline First under the championship of H.E. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and alongside Community Health Impact Coalition, Community Health Acceleration Partnership, and Financing Alliance for Health.

To meet the promise of professionalized community health workers—and drive progress toward universal health coverage, pandemic preparedness and response, and gender equity—we must radically transform community health financing. Africa Frontline First aims to achieve this by employing innovative financing solutions to catalyze $2 billion by 2030, enabling 200,000 professionalized health workers to serve 100 million people across 10 countries.

Africa Frontline First will provide the technical expertise and support national governments need as they build community health systems that can deliver effective, efficient, and equitable healthcare. We’ll do this through a focus on financing, political championship, and deep partnership with country leaders.

Last Mile Health’s 15-year track record building community health systems in partnership with governments makes our organization uniquely positioned to help ensure this goal becomes a reality. This initiative will be the cornerstone of our advocacy efforts globally over the next five years, as aligned with the Closing the Distance strategy.

In September 2022, Africa Frontline First announced a catalytic fund, housed at the Global Fund with contributions from the Skoll Foundation and Johnson & Johnson, mobilizing $100 million: the largest fund in history for professionalized community health workers. Building on this momentum, Africa Frontline First’s upcoming scale mechanism will seek to develop and deploy innovative and sustainable financing solutions to achieve its goals.