The Africa Health Budget Network is a group of African and global organizations and individuals already using or wishing to use budget advocacy as a tool to improve health service delivery in Africa. The network has three strands of work and provides formal training opportunities, events and tools. The network promotes learning and sharing within the network and coordinated and focused pressure on African leaders with respect to their health financing commitments.
Useful Resources
Okayafrica’s Top Films of 2014
Sefaboyake J: December 2014
On this website Okayafrica have picked some of the finest cinema originating from the continent from 2014. Some have courted controversy for their subject matter while others have been heralded as highly imaginative celebrations of Afrofuturist landscapes from the past to the present. The projects, from rising stars and celebrated auteurs alike, come from Mauritania, Ghana, South Africa, Nigeria and Kenya include documentaries, anthology films, full-length features and shorts. They address topics as varied as excessive use of police force in a South African mining community to vignettes delving into the lives of Kenya’s LGBTQI community. Each of these films (and filmmakers) are reported to push cinema boundaries in the stories they tell.
Data Visualisation: Africa’s Hydropower Future
SciDevNet, 2014
From Cote d’Ivoire in the west to Ethiopia in the east, Africa is home to some of the world’s fastest growing economies. Debates often proclaim a new era of economic boom, innovation and social opportunity for the continent. But beyond the hype, millions of people remain affected by severe poverty, and at the root of this lies a perennial problem: energy poverty. This data visualisation explores a creative way of interrogating the notion of whether hydropower could hold the key to energy access in Africa.
How to use Instagram for research communication
Patton B: Research to Action: 22 October 2014
Instagram, the social networking service that enables its users to take pictures and videos, apply digital filters to them, and share them across Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and Flickr, is becoming increasingly popular. A free application that can be downloaded onto mobile phones and tablets. Instagram currently has a predominantly young adult audience and is used as a tool to generate interest in campaigns.
Ten best resources for conducting financing and benefit incidence analysis in resource-poor settings
Wiseman V, Asante A, Price J, Hayen A, Irava W, Martins J, Guinness L, Jan S: Health Policy and Planning: 24 September 2014
Many low- and middle-income countries are seeking to reform their health financing systems to move towards universal coverage. This typically means that financing is based on people’s ability to pay while, for service use, benefits are based on the need for health care. Financing incidence analysis (FIA) and benefit incidence analysis (BIA) are two popular tools used to assess equity in health systems financing and service use. FIA studies examine who pays for the health sector and how these contributions are distributed according to socioeconomic status (SES). BIA determines who benefits from health care spending, with recipients ranked by their relative SES. In this article, the authors identify 10 resources to assist researchers and policy makers seeking to undertake or interpret findings from financing and benefit incidence analyses in the health sector. The article pays particular attention to the data requirements, computations, methodological challenges and country level experiences with these types of analyses.
Think Tank Initiative’s Policy Engagement and Communications Program — Anglophone Africa: A toolkit for researchers and communications officers
Results for Development Institute, CommsConsult, Anglophone Africa PEC program team: September 2014
In July 2013, 13 think tanks in Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Tanzania, and Uganda embarked on a mission to strengthen their Policy Engagement and Communications (PEC) capacity. Over the course of 15 months, the think tanks worked with a mentor to diagnose their capacity needs and develop a PEC workplan to strengthen their knowledge and capacity. Work included designing and refining communciation strategies, engaging peers and external stakeholders, and leveraging tools to sharpen their strategic messaging and outreach. The work resulted in the creation of new tools, skillsets, and shared lessons and strategies. This toolkit is a collection of the knowledge generated over the course of the work. It is intended to help the 13 think tanks - and many others - continue excelling and improving in their PEC abilities. It contains guiding principles, tips and suggested approaches to help better plan, package, disseminate and evaluate PEC strategies.
Training resources on sexual and reproductive health
Rights-Oriented Research & Education Network in and Reproductive Health, November 2014
The Rights-Oriented Research & Education Network in Sexual & Reproductive Health (SRH) aims to generate transformative and robust evidence for policies and programmes on SRH. RORE is involved in determining new indicators and domains of data to identify rights-realization/gender equality related influences on SRH issues (e.g. on reasons for not using services) and exploratory cross-regional research to evolve concepts from the perspective of those affected. Education and training activities of the Network aim to build capacity in research from a gender and human rights perspective on sexual and reproductive health. RORE provides educational materials, training and mentoring focused on gender and human rights based SRH research and online courses with lectures focused on promoting research with a gender and rights perspective for SRH.
Global Health Watch 4: An Alternative World Health Report
Coming November 13 2014
The Global Health Watch is widely perceived as the definitive voice for an alternative discourse on health. It integrates rigorous analysis, alternative proposals and stories of struggles and change to present a compelling case for the imperative to work for a radical transformation of the way we approach actions and policies on health. It is designed to question present policies on health and to propose alternatives. GHW4 is a collaborative effort by activists and academics from across the world, and has been coordinated the People’s Health Movement, Asociacion Latinoamericana de Medicina Social, Health Action International, Third World Network and Medact. This edition of the GHW will be available in November 2014 and PHM invite people to consider launching the GHW4 from December 2014. For this purpose ‘launch kits’ will be available by early November 2014.
The Right to Dream
Eduardo Galeano: March 2011
In 1948 and again in 1976, the United Nations proclaimed long lists of human rights, but the immense majority of humanity enjoys only the rights to see, hear and remain silent. Eduardo Galeano in this poem posits that suppose we start by exercising the never-proclaimed right to dream? Suppose we rave a bit? He asks us to set our sights beyond the abominations of today to divine another possible world.
Raising her Voice
Oxfam: September 2014
All around the world women's voices are absent from the many places and spaces in which the decisions that affect their everyday lives are made. Oxfam aims to change this by strengthening the way in which women's individual and collective voices influence decisions about services, investments, policies and legal frameworks so that worldwide, those in power, from village leaders to politicians and law-makers, become more accountable to them.From 2008-2013, the global Raising Her Voice programme, supported projects in 17 countries to enable over 1 million women to take part in, shape and monitor the decisions that most affect their lives. Although formal funding for RHV ended in March 2013, Oxfam is continuing to work on women's political rights and empowerment worldwide. This website provides case studies and videos on the work from African countries.