Advocating for a Global Child Survival Action Movement
February 19, 2025
The client is a global non-profit organisation that seeks to improve the lives of communities across the socioeconomic, education, and health sectors.
Our client was a large global taskforce that was established to monitor and accelerate progress on child mortality, with a particular focus on deaths between months 1 and 59. The taskforce is comprised of UN agencies, technical and financing global health agencies, as well as government representatives. In 2022, 4.9 million children died before their fifth birthday; more than 2.8 million of these children (57%) were African. The leading causes of death among children aged 1-59 months are pneumonia, diarrhoea and malaria, yet they are preventable and treatable.
In a global health governance landscape that is rapidly evolving and experiencing declining development assistance and competing global concerns, the issue of child survival risked being marginalised and falling off the priority list of the global health community. The Taskforce (our client) required urgent support to develop an advocacy strategy to elevate and maintain child survival as a critical global policy issue, in order to mobilise national and global investments, as well as secure a policy infrastructure that would support country level efforts to accelerate child survival. The problem was further compounded by the fact that child survival had previously benefited from a large global effort in previous decades, leaving the incorrect impression that child survival was largely finished business.
The Taskforce therefore faced the challenge of building a global partnership and movement to revitalise a broad spectrum of actors on the topic, firmly positioning child survival as a national, regional, and global development priority.
Given the fact that child survival today is an overwhelmingly African problem, it was critical to localise the solution and position the policy and advocacy efforts to be Africa-centred and led, while being globally oriented.
Market Access Africa developed a Blueprint for Child Survival Action and Advocacy as a guiding document to coalesce a global partnership of actors whose advocacy would permeate the highest levels of influence, decision-making, and accountability. The Blueprint was informed by a rigorous assessment of previous child survival policy and advocacy campaigns - supported by extensive expert consultations - and a nuanced analysis of current trends in global health governance, development assistance for health, as well as the New Public Health Order for Africa.
The advocacy strategy elaborated on 5 pillars to operationalise the policy advocacy effort:
In order to develop the advocacy strategy, MAA made use of various frameworks that have been effective in advancing change, particularly where multilateral action is required. The resultant framework that was recommended for advocacy considered the need to identify and mobilise critical actors that are outside the health system but are still highly influential and form a critical part of the policy chain. It also prioritised the leveraging of champions and political allies to enhance the voice and credibility of the effort. Finally, it embedded a community organising approach that recognised the need to surface and elevate community voices as an essential element of success.
MAA was subsequently engaged to Chair the Advocacy Action Working Group of the Taskforce, overseeing implementation of key aspects of the Blueprint, in partnership with other actors. This included developing ongoing analyses of policy windows which could be exploited to advance the call to action on child survival. In partnership with members of the Taskforce, MAA supported the development of policy instruments such as the World Health Assembly Resolution on Maternal and Child Health, as well as the Call to Action on Child Survival by WHO AFRO Ministers of Health. Child survival was also integrated into the annual agenda of the African Heads of State at the AU Summit, through integration into a continental scorecard on malaria and child health.
Child survival is rising in prominence as a policy priority among both African governments and their development partners. At the country level, countries are joining the child survival movement, developing local child survival action plans to accelerate their own implementation, and allocating resources to those plans. By integrating child survival into policy instruments such as at the WHO AFRO and AU level, there is increased accountability and progress monitoring towards SDG 3.2.
MAA is continuing to support the next phase of advocacy, including advising on a movement-style approach to child survival, further galvanising local and community voices to join the effort, while also equipping countries and local civil society actors to lead policy advocacy.
