COVID-19 Action Fund for Africa

In June 2020, partners came together with the goal of equipping and protecting community health workers in Africa by developing the COVID-19 Action Fund for Africa (CAF-Africa).

In our effort to ensure an equitable response to COVID-19, the Network fills strategic advocacy and policy gaps and helps drive equity conversations that are often overlooked.

In the early days of the pandemic, communities across sub-Saharan Africa faced potential disruption of health services. Community health workers (CHWs) play a vital role in health service delivery, especially in countries with less resilient health systems. However, they are often the last in line to receive necessary health products and protective equipment, which affects their ability to safely serve their communities. The Network and four partners (Community Health Impact Coalition, Community Health Acceleration Partnership, Direct Relief, and VillageReach) came together to form CAF-Africa as an emergency response effort to supply CHWs with personal protective equipment (PPE).

A radically collaborative partnership among philanthropic, civil society, government, and institutional partners enabled low- and middle-income countries to be competitive in a global marketplace. In 2020, CAF-Africa was the fifth largest procurement mechanism for PPE in the world. Between June 2020 and March 2022, CAF-Africa:

Partnered with Ministries of Health in 18 countries
Delivered 121.3 million+ pieces of PPE
Provided equipment for 479,508 CHWs

CAF-Africa Report: Protecting the Community Health Workforce During COVID-19

Though created as a stop-gap effort, CAF-Africa’s work informed a series of learnings and recommendations to address critical gaps in health systems, support for CHWs, and management of supplies during the pandemic.