Nigeria—Technical Assistance Hub (TA Hub)

In November 2019, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation invested in the establishment of a Technical Assistance Hub to serve as a platform for delivering cohesive technical assistance in primary healthcare to state governments in Nigeria. DAI was contracted to establish and transition the formative entity to a steady-state organization, with the capacity to function as an independent platform providing technical assistance for primary health care system strengthening to state governments. The Hub is now registered as TAConnect and since June 2021 has started to operate as a fully-fledged entity.

TAConnect’s activities addressed fragmentation in the design and delivery of technical assistance to states in Nigeria, enabling increased collaboration, coordination, learning, and impact. We provided support to TAConnect to mature specific strategic and operational functions of the organization such as: business plan and business development support, financial management and fiduciary responsibility strengthening, subaward management strengthening, and statutory compliance support.

We applied core principles such as continuous curation of technical assistance resources, promotion of peer learning, robust monitoring, and reliance on feedback loops, thereby ensuring that TAConnect remains relevant and responsive to its operating environment and to state government needs—with the ultimate goal of assisting state and local governments to own and sustain the systems-level improvements in service delivery.

Sample Activities

• Serve as a demonstration of the TA Hub’s core principles—the group-antenatal care program will assist state governments to implement and sustain group-antenatal care as part of each state’s primary healthcare system. Group-antenatal care will serve as the platform for related services such as early malaria detection and malaria treatment and will tie into another TA Hub investment focused on strengthening the primary healthcare system’s management capacity.
• Strengthen Nigeria’s primary healthcare management capacity by improving management, operational efficiency, governance, supervision, and the quality of clinical services.

Select Results

• Supported Kaduna State to build its primary healthcare managers’ capacity to manage facilities with improved service delivery. • Supported Kano and Nasarawa States to determine the status of their primary healthcare management systems and develop capacity-strengthening plans.

• Supported Kaduna, Kano, and Nasarawa State governments to adopt, implement, and sustain group antenatal care as an alternate model of care for pregnant women.
• Supported Kano State to determine the status of its primary healthcare management system and develop a capacity-strengthening plan.
• Supported Gombe State to conduct a full diagnostic of its primary healthcare systems, with deep dives into health financing, human resources for health, and data management.