Statement on MacKenzie Scott’s Gift to Amref Health Africa

MacKenzie Scott’s unassuming generosity and catalytic investment to support the work of Amref Health Africa, demonstrated a core value of Amref’s, “Ubuntu”; meaning, “I am because you are”.  This transformational investment will further the critical work we are doing to deliver sustainable health access to communities, especially women and girls, and bring lasting health change to Africa built from the community up.

For over six decades, Amref Health Africa has worked in Africa to deliver capacity for communities to respond to their health challenges by bridging the gap that exists between the formal health system and communities where they work and live. Amref works with African leadership, governments and key partners to ensure that health systems are strengthened and access to health ensured.

Our ‘Communities First’ approach is at the heart of our work in programme implementation, and drives the development of our health system innovations to address local challenges. Each year we reach 40 million people directly and indirectly on the continent, across 35 countries. This transformative investment will enable Amref to sustainably scale its impact on the African continent, propelling it further, deeper and faster to achieve sustainable development in Africa in line with our strategy and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). It will empower the most disenfranchised on the continent, and allow us to address health access issues across the socio-economic, gender and youth divide.

This investment comes at a time when the devastating impact of a global pandemic has revealed the fragility of health systems in the global south and demonstrated how critical strong people centred health systems are to ensuring access to routine services for the most marginalized and hardest to reach. It demonstrated that our work to build resilient health systems, starting with community health systems, is at the core of improving health outcomes for Africa. Through this investment, Amref will continue to invest in the community; deliver truly African sustainable health solutions; build integrated systems for rational growth of the organization and expand its reach across the continent.

We are inspired by the confidence and responsibility entrusted to us. Our commitment to drive local solutions to address global health issues, remains unwavering. Our most sincere appreciation to MacKenzie Scott for this investment and for amplifying the importance of direct support for southern-based, locally driven solutions and organizations to address global problems.

Thank you. We are honoured to receive your light and to pass it on to others!