Resource Type: Presentation
Authors: Carlos Avila, Catherine Connor, Tesfaye Dereje, Sharon Nakhimovsky, Wendy Wong
Published: 7/17/2013

Resource Description: The first decade of the new millennium brought high-level advocacy to mobilize more funding for health coupled with unprecedented economic growth in some African countries. Given the region’s healthy economic outlook, will countries have adequate domestic resources for basic health services by 2020?

USAID’s Health Finance and Governance project looked into sub-Saharan Africa’s health financing outlook by projecting domestic health spending per capita to 2020 and comparing it to an internationally-accepted target ($60 per capita) for universal coverage of a package of essential health services. The analysis modeled two assumptions: 1) domestic health spending continuing to increase in line with current economic growth and 2) countries moving aggressively towards fulfilling their Abuja commitment (15% of the government expenditure). Under the economic growth assumption alone, the projections indicate that a little over half of the countries will be spending over USD 60 per capita by 2020. In this presentation, Dr. Carlos Avila discussed the results of the analysis and reaffirmed the need for complementary actions to improve equity and efficiency in addition to resource mobilization.

Projections of Domestic Resources