Global Financing Facility

The Global Financing Facility for Women, Children and Adolescents (GFF) is a country driven partnership that aims to accelerate efforts to end preventable maternal, newborn, child and adolescent deaths and improve the health and quality of life of women, adolescents and children, and thereby prevent up to 3.8 million maternal deaths, 101 million child deaths, and 21 million stillbirths in high burden countries by 2030.  The GFF seeks to support countries with an integrated health system approach that looks for the best solutions for better RMNCAH outcomes.

The GFF acts as a pathfinder in a new era of financing for development by pioneering a model that shifts away from focusing solely on official development assistance to an approach that combines external support, domestic financing, and innovative solutions for resource mobilization and delivery (including the private sector) in a synergistic way.  To do this, the GFF aims to reduce inefficiency in health spending through smarter financing.  Furthermore, the GFF aims to mobilize additional funding through the combination of grants from a dedicated multi-donor trust fund (the GFF Trust Fund), financing from International Development Association (IDA) and International Bank of Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), and the crowding-in of additional domestic and external resources.  The GFF also leverages the private sector expertise of the International Finance Corporation, the World Bank Group’s private sector arm, to attract private sector resources to priority investment areas.

The GFF Secretariat is responsible for supporting countries, managing the GFF Trust Fund, supporting the GFF Investors Group, and the governance mechanism for the GFF.  The Secretariat is based at the World Bank, situated in the HNP Global Practice. The GFF health financing team is responsible for supporting countries mobilize additional resources for health and improve the use of those resources to improve health outcomes and progress towards the health-related SDGs.

A core aspect of the GFF’s health financing team is supporting countries in resource (budget) mapping (RM) and expenditure tracking (ET) of investment cases (or the country’s national health plan). The RM and ET exercise provides a comprehensive picture of funding gaps, and alignment of donor and government funding with the aim of supporting the health sector of low- and middle-income countries to mobilize additional resources, improve allocative efficiency, and better coordinate planning efforts.

GFF countries fall under different categories in their capacity for, and experience in conducting RMET. Countries in the first category (or early stage) have recently started or are in the process of starting their RM/ET; they will need extensive external technical assistance in conducting RMET. As countries move towards the third category (final stage), ministries of health and relevant institutions will have sufficient expertise to lead the process. The nature of technical support for such countries will be lighter touch, focused on improving use of data and analysis from RMET for decision-making.

As part of the GFF expansion phase, support is needed to help countries with RMET. The focus will be on early stage countries requiring heavy support but will also extend to other countries. The GFF is in the process of building a pool of short-term consultants who can be deployed to provide TA to ministries of health on RMET and contribute to enhance in-country technical skills in this area.