Our Strategy
Our goal is to drive transformational growth for Amref UK between 2024 and 2030, to support Amref’s work towards Africa’s health transformation. Here’s how we’ll do it.
Amref’s vision is for lasting health change in Africa
We live in a rapidly changing world. We must adapt with those changes to ensure that everyone, everywhere, has access to the healthcare they need and at a price they can afford.
In Africa, we know that this change is driven in large part by six factors:
1. The urgency to attain Universal Health Coverage (UHC)
UHC means that every person can access quality care at a price that they can afford. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the drive to reach UHC across Africa was urgent. The State of UHC Report shows that in 2021, just 46% of people across Africa could access the healthcare that they needed. The pandemic accelerated this drive to spotlight UHC as the critical factor to address the current health and disease burdens and also as a foundation on which to build global health security in the future.
Read the full report
2. The climate crisis
The exponential rise in global temperatures is the biggest threat to our health – now and in the future. African communities have contributed the least to polluting emissions that are known to cause global warming, yet they are among the communities that are the most impacted by the effects of the climate crisis.
Read more about why Africa’s climate action strategies need a rethink.
3. Growing youth population resulting in increased rapid urbanisation
Around 60% of Africa’s population is less than 25 years old (WEF 2023)—and a large proportion of these young people are moving from rural households into cities to get a job and seek out a different life to that of their parents. This rapid urbanisation is a threat to health—from overcrowded housing causing sanitation issues, to more sedentary lifestyles and pollution leading to non-communicable diseases like type 2 diabetes and cancer.
4. Health security
Every year, more than 100 health emergencies happen in Africa (WHO-AFRO, 2022). These include disease outbreaks of infectious diseases such as measles, mpox or Ebola. Many of these emergencies are preventable with health interventions to prepare for, detect, and respond to health emergencies.
5. Regional conflicts and their impact on health systems
Conflict always affects civilian populations. Whether internal unrest or regional wars, conflicts force people to move from their homes – to be displaced both temporarily and permanently, destroy civilian infrastructure including hospitals and schools, and create acute humanitarian crises including malnutrition and famine. Across Africa, this inflicts lethal damage to already weak health systems, leaving millions of people without any access to even basic healthcare.
6. Transformation in data and technology and its impact on access to and delivery of health services.
Technological advances – when harnessed effectively and responsibly – can be transformational for a health system. Digital solutions such as AI and blockchain support everything from how - and how quickly - a person gets a diagnosis to training health workers and predicting health emergencies.
Our Strategy
With this rapid change as the backdrop to our work, our strategy crystallises our mission to:
- Catalyse and drive community-led and people-centred primary healthcare systems.
- Address the social determinants of health to increase equitable access to health.
What is primary healthcare?
- In a health system, primary care is the first point of contact that a person has with the system. It will usually involve general medical services for common illnesses provided by doctors, nurse practitioners, or other trained health professionals.
- Primary care is an integrated approach with people at its centre. It considers the social, environmental and economic factors that influence health, and addresses them through a focus on prevention—how to empower people with the information and tools or technology they need to keep themselves healthy—from birth to death.
What are the social determinants of health?
- Social determinants of health are the factors that influence people’s health—whether positively or negatively.
- They broadly consider the conditions that people are born, grow, work, live and age in. These also include the wider systems that shape how we live, for example, economics and politics.
- These factors can include someone’s access to education, to nutritious food, and employment to their gender, and their exposure to the impacts of climate change.
- Research shows that social determinants of health can be more important than health care or lifestyle choices in influencing health.
The strategy is aligned with key regional and global policies and strategies that will shape Africa’s health agenda. These include the WHO’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), Universal Health Coverage (UHC) 2030, and the African Union’s Africa Health Strategy.
Together, our goal is to help create lasting health change in Africa, to realise the vision of an Africa with Health for All.
Our strategy aims to deliver this goal by strengthening community health systems to increase access to, and use of, primary healthcare. This will reduce morbidity and mortality rates in communities, as well as reducing healthcare costs both for individuals and for governments.
Our Goal in the UK
Amref Health Africa UK’s primary purpose is to raise funds from UK partners and supporters for Amref’s community-led health programmes.
Our strategy 2024-2030 aligns with the priorities identified by our colleagues in Africa, as detailed in our Amref Global Strategy, but is tailored to the UK context.
We are aiming for transformational growth in the UK to support the Amref work being done to achieve Africa’s health transformation.
We know that building transformational growth requires solid foundations and ambitious vision. To achieve this, we will focus on two clear strategic aims.
Drive bold but balanced growth in unrestricted funding
We are aiming to rapidly grow Individual Giving to raise £20m in unrestricted income between 2024 and 2030. A balanced approach will allow us to scale without being overly reliant on one audience or channel. We will initially focus on Regular Giving acquisition on digital and Direct Response TV, while continuing to grow the funds we receive through Philanthropy.
Focus on value over volume to sustainably grow restricted funding
We are aiming to secure strategic partnerships that deliver £30m in restricted funding between 2024 and 2030. We will focus on driving multi-year investments from three sources: corporates, trusts and foundations, and institutional donors. As we grow existing and create new relationships, we are adopting a phased approach to facilitating direct funds to Africa and transferring relationship management of key partners to Amref HQ and country offices.
Keep reading
You can download a two-page summary of the Strategy here.
The progress we're making
Read Amref Health Africa UK's 2023 Impact Report to see how we're doing against our goals.