USAID Launches Roadmap for Attracting Investments in Global Health

March 11, 2019

The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) recently launched the Blended Finance Roadmap for Global Health to help agency units and other donors and partners attract investors for public health initiatives. The 32-page guide includes steps to analyze investment opportunities as well as analyses from India and Tanzania on public-private avenues for financing.

Prepared by KOIS Invest, USAID’s Global Health Bureau’s Center for Innovation and Impact, and DAI’s INVEST team, the roadmap describes how to optimize blended finance for scalable and sustainable health initiatives by identifying the country archetype, defining the health issue, prioritizing financing challenges, evaluating the potential for blended finance, shortlisting blended finance instruments, and identifying steps required to consummate transactions. Complemented by extensive stakeholder interviews and analyses from Liberia, in addition to those from India and Tanzania, the roadmap describes five design principles:

1. Define the transaction’s high-level design: Outline key parameters early and identify assumptions, risks, and enablers.

2. Identify project champions and key expert resources: To support design and implementation of the transaction.

3. Leverage the broader USAID toolkit: Grant capital and credit guarantees, technical expertise in global health, convening power and credibility, country presence and relationships, and policy influence.

4. Engage stakeholders: Involve all key stakeholders at all stages of the transaction and ensure objectives are aligned.

5. Attract/encourage new businesses and actors into public health.

“The private sector has recently emerged as a critical player in development with increasing investments in low- and middle-income countries … and partnership opportunities have led to new ways of working toward a healthier world free of poverty,” write USAID’s Amy Lin and Priya Sharma of USAID’s Center for Innovation and Impact in the roadmap’s foreword.

The roadmap was developed as a practical resource to help close a funding gap that hinders progress on neo-natal and maternal health, nutrition, disease mitigation, and other health challenges. USAID is encouraging blended finance approaches as part of its Private Sector Engagement Policy, released in December. USAID, KOIS, and DAI will be reviewing the roadmap for USAID units and others at upcoming events.