Africa is home to the fastest-growing and youngest population in the world. By 2050, its population is projected to reach 2.5 billion people, meaning one in four people globally will be African. This demographic boom is placing pressure on the continent’s health systems, which continue to rely on imported health commodities and foreign aid to fund basic health services.
The Collaborating Center was established to respond to these challenges.
Speakers and panelists from Georgetown University and the African Union.
Collaborating Center to Drive Health Market Development
The center will implement innovative solutions that unlock the private sector’s potential to invest in health, build viable health markets across the continent, and promote wealth creation through health.
As a hub for knowledge and evidence generation, the center will guide the design and implementation of the Program for Investment and Financing in Africa’s Health in key countries. This supports Africa’s shift from foreign aid to sustainable, domestically driven health financing.
The center will also strengthen countries’ capacity in leadership, governance, cross-sectoral collaboration, and the use of data science and digital health to improve implementation. It will support the development of fundable investment cases, identify strategic partnerships, design training programs for current and future African health leaders, and evaluate the impact of health market policies and interventions.
Georgetown’s interdisciplinary expertise is central to the initiative.
The university will draw on the expertise of schools such as the McCourt School of Public Policy and Georgetown Law for policy and legal insight, the McDonough School of Business for private sector engagement, the Walsh School of Foreign Service for international cooperation, and the Georgetown University Medical Center for clinical input.
AUDA-NEPAD CEO Nardos Bekele-Thomas delivers opening remarks.
Launch Event Highlights Collective Commitment to Global Health
The launch event brought together distinguished guests, including former Nigerian President Oluṣẹgun Ọbasanjọ, members of the African diplomatic corps, ministers and special envoys, U.S. government officials, and leaders from international organizations, academia, and the private sector.
Joseph A. Ferrara, Ph.D., senior vice president and chief of staff at Georgetown University, opened the event by framing the center as an expression of the university’s Catholic and Jesuit mission.
This is an opportunity to convene stakeholders from around the world to help shape global health investment and policy and to advance impactful research and innovation in service to our international communities.
Nardos Bekele-Thomas, chief executive officer of AUDA-NEPAD, highlighted the urgency of shifting to African-led development models. “How can a continent that spends $65 billion annually on health care still import 85% of its essential medicines?” she asked. “We count on Georgetown for a wonderful collaboration to make the Africa we want a reality.”
Florizelle Liser, chief executive officer and president at the Corporate Council on Africa, followed by underlining the role of private investment. She noted that the center will serve as a platform to mobilize investment, promote innovation, and integrate private sector expertise into health development strategies. She also pledged her organization’s support in this endeavor.
Origins of the Partnership
The center is the culmination of over three years of supporting the African Union’s African Leadership Meeting–Investing in Health. This work has enabled more than a dozen countries to increase domestic investment in health.
Lahra Smith moderates a discussion featuring Symerre Grey-Johnson, Edem Adzogenu, and Deus Bazira.
A fireside chat, moderated by Lahra Smith, Ph.D., director of the African Studies Program at Georgetown University, focused on the genesis of the partnership and the unique opportunity it provides to transform the health market on the continent into an engine of economic growth and development. The discussion featured Deus Bazira, DrPH, MPH, MBA, director of the Center for Global Health Practice and Impact and inaugural director the Global Health Institute; Symerre Grey-Johnson, director of human capital and institutional development at AUDA-NEPAD; and Edem Adzogenu, M.D., co-chair at AfroChampions.
Bazira spoke about the urgent need to address Africa’s widening health infrastructure gap and translation of good financing plans into action. He pointed to the role of academic institutions like Georgetown in providing intellectual resources and culturally attuned research that supports African Union-led strategies.
At Georgetown, we have the ability to fast-track the generation of knowledge and evidence that can inform policy and practice, and to quickly translate that knowledge through a culturally relevant lens.
Sandeep Dahiya moderates a discussion featuring Michel Sidibé, Zeynep Kantur Ozenci, and Donald Kaberuka.
A strategic dialogue followed on how Africa’s health sector can fuel economic growth. Sandeep Dahiya, Ph.D., director of the Business of Health Initiative at Georgetown’s McDonough School of Business, moderated the panel discussion with Michel Sidibé, special envoy for African Medicines Agency; Donald Kaberuka, Ph.D., special envoy and high representative for health financing at the African Union’s African Leadership Meeting–Investing in Health; and Zeynep Kantur Ozenci, global head of health at the International Finance Corporation.
Sidibé—former executive director of the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS, minister of health and social affairs of Mali, and United Nations under-secretary-general—called for a new model of African health diplomacy that builds investor confidence and mobilizes domestic private sectors.
“Innovation needs to be central to our global health diplomacy debate today,” Sidibé said.
Kaberuka, former president of the African Development Bank and minister of finance of Rwanda, pushed for deeper collaboration among African countries. Rather than adopting “isolated, autarkic policies,” he encouraged countries to adopt models that are scalable and already working in parts of Africa.
He cited Rwanda’s drone delivery systems and tech-enabled health management as examples of innovations worth expanding. What is needed now, Kaberuka added, “is creating the right environment for investment and making these solutions viable across the continent.”
Ozenci spoke about the importance of supporting small and medium health enterprises in developing investment cases and business practices that help them grow into sustainable, viable businesses.
Looking Ahead
In his closing remarks, Thomas Banchoff, Ph.D., vice president for global engagement at Georgetown, described the center as a bridge between Africa, Georgetown, and international partners to generate new ideas, inform policy, and strengthen delivery systems across Africa. As Banchoff put it, the center represents an opportunity to “bring Africa to Washington in a qualitatively new way.”
The center is a university-wide initiative that will be coordinated jointly by the Georgetown University Global Health Institute and the Center for Global Health Practice and Impact.
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