The Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) has intensified efforts to unlock an estimated $1 billion in health financing through debt-for-health swaps, as part of a broader strategy to secure sustainable funding for the continent’s health systems.
Dr Jean Kaseya, Director-General of Africa CDC, announced this during a weekly high-level regional press briefing on Thursday.
Kaseya said sustainable financing is now one of the institution’s five strategic pillars, with a strong emphasis on mobilizing innovative domestic resources and exploring previously underutilized mechanisms such as debt swaps.
“When we talk about sustainable financing, we are looking at increasing innovative domestic resources and also bringing in funding that we didn’t explore in the past, like debt swaps,” he said.
He explained that debt swaps—arrangements in which part of a country’s external debt is forgiven in exchange for domestic investment in agreed development priorities—are increasingly seen as a powerful tool to ease fiscal pressure while strengthening health security.
To advance the initiative, Africa CDC has appointed Mr Christoph Benn as Senior Advisor to the Director-General.
“Benn, a German health financing specialist with over 30 years of global experience, is currently Director of Global Health Diplomacy at the Joep Lange Institute in Geneva,” Kaseya said.
“He previously led resource mobilization at the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, where he played a key role in securing billions of dollars for infectious disease programmes and advancing innovative financing mechanisms.”
Kaseya added that Benn is now working with Africa CDC’s public financial management and health financing teams to provide technical support to African Union member states seeking to structure and negotiate debt-for-health swap agreements.
