The Global Financing Facility and Family Planning

When the Global Financing Facility (GFF) was announced in 2014, it promised a “pioneering” way to finance and improve the lives of women, adolescents,
children and newborns through provision of reproductive, maternal newborn, and child health programs and policies. Family planning advocates and implementers were interested in the possibility of additional funds particularly as a global contraceptives funding crisis is looming, and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are being operationalized. To date, the GFF has had three rounds of countries selected to receive funding. In the first round, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Kenya and Tanzania were selected. In the second round, Bangladesh, Cameroon, Liberia, Mozambique, Nigeria, Senegal and Uganda were selected. In the third round, Guatemala, Guinea, Myanmar and Sierra Leone were selected.

To better understand the role of the GFF in filling funding gaps for family planning and contraceptive procurement, we analyzed the four published investment cases for Kenya, Tanzania, Ethiopia and Uganda.

Investment cases are country-led prioritized plans to improve reproductive, maternal, newborn, child and adolescent health with GFF and other resources. We also reviewed GFF Project Appraisal Documents (PADs), which describe the specifics of activities being funded by the GFF. To ensure funded activities are country identified, PAD activities should reflect priorities that are laid out in the investment cases.

Investments using GFF funding have been approved or are pending approval for five countries: Kenya, Tanzania, Nigeria, Cameroon, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. We looked specifically for family planning and contraceptive procurement language in each of the required components of the investment case and the PADs. These include: results or objectives that a country wants to achieve with the GFF or funded project; priority interventions/components that the GFF or project should fund; and indicators to measure the success of the GFF. We found that even if investment cases prioritize family planning and contraceptive procurement interventions, they might not be reflected in activities for funding in the PADs.

With lessons learned from this review, CSOs will hopefully be better able to understand where to influence the GFF to ensure that future funding for family planning is prioritized.