Global Financing Facility

The Global Financing Facility for Women, Children and Adolescents (GFF) is in the process of refreshing its strategy for 2021-2025 and we are pleased to launch a public comment period that will be open until Wednesday 30^th of September.

The COVID-19 pandemic threatens to reverse recent gains in reproductive, maternal, newborn, child and adolescent health in the poorest countries.  This is unacceptable. Now is the time for the global community to double down on its commitment to ensure that all women, children, and adolescents can access the quality, affordable health care they need to survive and thrive. This is the core mission of the GFF.

We are currently in the final phase of drafting the GFF strategy refresh paper and are seeking inputs from a wide range of GFF stakeholders and partners. Your opinions and voices will be critical to ensure that the GFF is fit for purpose and can optimally support countries to protect, promote and accelerate progress for women, children, and adolescent health over the next five years. Please complete the survey here.

Background:

The refresh was commissioned by the GFF Trust Fund Committee and spearheaded by the GFF Secretariat, under the guidance of a Core Group of GFF Investors Group members. A consulting firm, HSDF, supported the GFF Secretariat with diagnostics work including more than 100 stakeholder interviews conducted in Q1 2020, three country case studies (DRC, Ghana, Mozambique), and a desk review of more than 300 documents. The diagnostic work highlights several areas where the GFF partnership can expand and deepen its impact going forward. 

An Issues Paper presented to the GFF Investors Group in April 2020 provided a detailed summary of this analysis and laid out several priority areas for the GFF over the next five years.

The Issues paper highlighted six cross-cutting priority areas for attention and strengthening:

• Communications: The need to articulate and communicate GFF’s value proposition and theory of change including implication of COVID-19 pandemic.
• Country leadership: The need to enhance GFF support to partner countries, particularly in Investment Case implementation;
• Accountability: The need to ascertain clearer roles and accountability structures that apply to all GFF partners in the Investment Case development and implementation.
• Health financing: The need for clearer communication and greater realism around GFF’s contributions to domestic resource mobilization, including roadmaps in each GFF supported country;
• Results agenda: The need to be more explicit about what the GFF partnership can be expected to deliver in terms of results, by when, and to/for whom.
• Fit-for-purpose:  The need to clarify roles, mutual expectations, and accountability in the context of a renewed partnership agreement with the WB. 

Based on the feedback received on the Issues Paper, from May to early September the GFF Secretariat has conducted a series of workshops and discussions with representatives of GFF partner countries, members of the Investors Group and Trust Fund Committee, and GFF and World Bank staff to delve into these cross-cutting areas and identify areas for action.  Their feedback in turn has informed the draft paper that is now open for comment.

Following the consultations, the draft paper will be revised and tabled for discussion at the upcoming meetings of the GFF Investors Group and Trust Fund Committee in the second half of October.  We will also prepare a report summarizing all of the feedback received.