ECA convenes high-level advisory group to advance Africa’s shift from aid-dependent to domestically financed health systems

The United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) today convened the inaugural meeting of the High-Level Advisory Group (HLAG) on health financing, meeting at ECA headquarters in Addis Ababa in a closed, hybrid session that opened with remarks setting out the scale of the financing challenge facing African health systems and the mandate the HLAG has been asked to carry forward. The Initiative  supports African governments in mobilizing sustainable, predominantly domestic financing for health, building on the Tangier Declaration adopted by African ministers of finance, planning and economic development in March 2026 and is coordinated by ECA in collaboration with partners.

Opening the meeting, the ECA’s Executive Secretary Claver Gatete,  emphasized stronger coordination between health and finance ministries, alongside domestic resources, innovative financing and private investment. “There’s nothing that can be done without people. We need them to be healthy to be able to contribute.”

Gatete framed the HLAG’s work around the sharp contraction in official development assistance for health and the debt burdens narrowing the fiscal space available to African governments, and grounded its mandate in the Tangier Declaration, which frames health spending as an investment in human capital and economic resilience rather than a cost to be managed.