Our Charity's Impact - Amref Health Africa UK

In 2022, Amref's programmes directly supported 31.5 million people across sub-Saharan Africa with programmes covering: maternal, newborn and child health and nutrition; access to water and sanitation; sexual and reproductive health and rights; communicable and non-communicable diseases; neglected tropical diseases. We provided over 110,000 trainings to more than 70,000 health workers and supported the full vaccination of 15.9 million people against COVID-19.

We continue to respond to the ongoing effects of the pandemic in all our countries of operation. We are learning from country-specific contexts, adapting our existing projects, adjusting timelines, adding new activities, and finding new ways to deliver vital services and information to the communities we support.

we directly supported

31.5 million

we provided over

110,000

and we supported the full vaccination of

15.9 million

How we measure impact

Step 1

Programme design

We co-create our programmes alongside the communities that will benefit from them, as well as with local experts and our partners. We begin with a baseline assessment, which informs a clear set of indicators, as well as rules or protocols that guide the way we measure these indicators. We report against these indicators on a quarterly and yearly basis. This acts as a barometer against which we can measure progress and impact throughout the project's implementation.

Step 2

Monitoring

Measuring key data points over the lifespan of a project helps us understand the impacts produced by an intervention - positive and negative, intended and unintended, direct and indirect. It also means we can adjust our activities to reflect an evolving context: especially important as the COVID-19 crisis continues.

We ensure that the people we support are able to feed into this process and share their views and ideas.

Step 3

Evaluation and learning

We carefully evaluate the outputs and outcomes of our work. Lessons learned are shared across the organisation, as well as with partners. We ensure that the evidence generated by each of our programmes informs and shapes future programmes – ensuring that we are providing tailored and sustainable solutions to the challenges communities face.

Ensuring sustainability

Our vision is of change that is not just meaningful, but sustainable. Working with communities throughout the lifespan of a project – from design, to implementation, to evaluation – is one way we ensure our work has a lasting impact.

In parallel, we create an enabling environment through our advocacy work, pushing for policy change at local, national, regional and global levels. Our unique expertise, excellent reputation, and decades-strong relationships with partners at all levels leave us well-placed to push the needle on the most pressing health challenges facing the African continent.

Strengthening systems

Africa is experiencing a critical shortage of health workers. The gap has been widened by the COVID-19 pandemic, which has put unbearable pressure on health workers across the continent, affecting their own physical and mental health.

Our focus on human resources for health is part of what makes our work sustainable. We train health workers - based in communities and at facility level - in a wide range of topics, using traditional face-to-face formats as well as mobile and online learning platforms. The health workers we train go on to use and share their skills, making a lasting difference to the people they care for.

Our research agenda

Research is a crucial step towards achieving lasting health change in Africa, and is a key component of Amref Health Africa's mission.

The overall purpose of research at Amref is to generate evidence in order to transform policies and practices in health development. We aim to contribute to regional, national and sub-national health policies as well as to share our research so that it can be more widely used across the NGO sector including by partners, donors and researchers.