To achieve Africa’s health goals, a new approach is needed: one that positions private, return seeking capital to co-invest alongside governments and the world’s most credible donor institutions to scale transformative health innovations through private enterprise or public-private partnerships. This has been coined “a capital stack” approach
Dialogue 1: Reenvisaging private sector capital for health in Africa: the capital stack approach (virtual – 19 October 2021)
Blended finance encourages actors who share the same mission but have varying risk-tolerance and objectives to invest alongside one another. For this approach to work at the scale of the need, we need to overcome some fundamental challenges: 1) deal flow, 2) risk adjusted returns, 3) aligned co-investment. This first series dialogue will focus on the conditions needed for scaling blended finance investments where they are needed most, both thematically and geographically.
Currently, there is a lack of coordination among concessional and commercial actors investing in healthcare in Africa, which prevents “blending” through co-investment. Additionally, because many health enterprises are not financially sustainable, investment opportunities that offer risk adjusted returns are limited, cutting private sector healthcare enterprises off from scalable financing. As a result, there is a critical lack of large-scale, socially oriented investment opportunities within the African healthcare sector that meet commercial risk-adjusted return requirements. In addition, there is a perception within the market that investing in healthcare at scale to reach patients at the bottom of the pyramid is too risky and difficult.
Wilton Park, in partnership with the Global Business Coalition for Health (GBCHealth), Malaria No More, the Health Finance Coalition (HFC) and Amref Health Africa is developing a three-part series of interactive dialogues that aim to mobilize private capital and private enterprise to help achieve and accelerate public health goals for Africa.
Related events:
Wilton Park reference number: WP1996V1
