The purpose of the African Center of Health Excellence Project is to help the 52-nation African Health Delegation build the necessary foundation for improving public health in Africa and to establish an international policy consensus on technology transfer and implementation of practical solutions supporting African health infrastructure development. This represents a unique area of expertise in NPF's Policies that Work Program and is a specialty we call "Health Diplomacy."

The lack of a commercially viable healthcare market in Africa has been a major impediment to improved health delivery. This is due to numerous factors, but three critical factors have been the absence of a:

• common legal framework needed to attract investment.


• sufficiently large and integrated market needed by health system vendors to justify the investment and operations of a health system support infrastructure such as maintenance depots, training of personnel, supply chains, etc.


• uniform purchasing approach whereby small national markets can be aggregated into lager regional markets that would be attractive to investors and suppliers.

In May 2008, the UN World Health Assemblies (WHA) passed resolution 61.21 providing for, among other things, the establishment of an African Center of Health Excellence. This Resolution is a compact between the 52-member African delegation to collaborate on the creation of critical foundational components of an improved health delivery system in Africa.

NPF is working to help establish a policy strategy for a common legal framework, development of harmonized market structures, and financing strategies needed to stimulate major industrial investment and development in support of an improved system of health delivery. This framework will facilitate projects such as MAMASnet to achieve large-scale implementation and sustainability.