AFRICAN finance and health ministers are convening in the Ethiopian capital for a landmark summit aimed at transforming how the continent funds its health systems, as declining foreign aid and recent disease outbreaks expose critical gaps in Africa’s public health infrastructure.
The high-level event, co-hosted by the African Development Bank, Africa CDC, and the African Union Development Agency-NEPAD, will introduce a new “Finance-Health Approach” designed to institutionalise joint planning between finance and health ministries across the continent.
The initiative comes as Africa grapples with what organisers describe as the steepest decline in Official Development Assistance in decades. In 2025, foreign health aid – historically representing 35% of Africa’s external health financing at approximately $14.6 billion annually – contracted sharply, even as the continent battled multi-country outbreaks of Mpox, Marburg, and Ebola.
“Poor health costs Africa $2.4 trillion every year, undermining productivity, widening inequities, and constraining the continent’s economic transformation,” according to event organisers, who cite evidence that scaling up proven health interventions could increase Africa’s GDP growth by 0.5% annually over 20 years.
The summit, scheduled on the margins of the 39th Ordinary Session of the Assembly of the African Union, will unfold in two parts: a morning ministerial session focusing on practical financing pathways, followed by an afternoon session with heads of state centred on political commitments.
Central to the initiative is addressing what organisers call a persistent “execution gap”—priority health investments that stall between planning and delivery due to fragmented pipelines and weak alignment between national priorities and available capital.
The African Development Bank has committed $3 billion through its Strategy for Quality Health Infrastructure in Africa and an additional $3 billion via its Pharmaceutical Action Plan to support local manufacturing of vaccines, medicines, and diagnostics.
The new approach will establish a standing inter-ministerial platform enabling finance and health ministers to jointly plan, cost, and mobilise resources. Countries will receive structured technical support for domestic resource mobilisation and public finance management reforms.
A key tool will be the Programme for Investment and Financing in Africa’s Health Sector (PIFAH) Project List and Digital Portal, described as “Africa’s Health Market Atlas,” which consolidates country health investment opportunities and connects them with financing instruments.
Expected outcomes include political endorsement of health as a strategic economic investment at the head-of-state level, launch of the “Addis Commitment on Finance-Health Collaboration,” and establishment of a shared accountability framework linking national planning to performance monitoring.
The event will be attended by African ministers of finance, planning, health, industry and trade, along with representatives from the African Continental Free Trade Area, private sector partners, and international donors.
