Paulin Basinga, the Gates Foundation Africa Director (L), and Edha Nahdi, the Group Managing Director of Amsons Group of Companies (C) during a panel discussion.
KIGALI – At a time when global aid is shrinking and Africa’s population is rising faster than anywhere else in the world, some of the continent’s leading voices are warning that maternal health can no longer remain the responsibility of governments and charities alone.
This featured at a side event during the Africa CEO Forum in Kigali, where business executives, philanthropists and policymakers gathered to confront one of Africa’s defining economic questions.
The discussion was built around a striking World Health Organization estimate that every dollar invested in maternal and child health can generate up to seven dollars in economic returns through healthier populations, increased productivity and lower healthcare costs.
Yet despite decades of global investment, West and Central Africa still account for more than half of maternal deaths worldwide. How to prevent the continent from losing an entire generation to avoidable maternal and child deaths is not a point of contention.
For Donald Kaberuka, Chairman of SouthBridge Holding and former President of the African Development Bank, the issue extends far beyond healthcare systems. He said it reflects Africa’s growing need to build resilient institutions as external support becomes less certain.
“What do we do when aid demand increases, but external support suddenly declines? That is the reality many African countries are facing today,” Kaberuka noted, referring to conversations he recently held with African health ministers in Nairobi, Kenya.
Donald Kaberuka, the former President of the African Development Bank, says that Africa has a growing growing need to build resilient institutions as external support becomes less certain.
From Crisis to Coordination
Kaberuka drew parallels between today’s maternal health challenges and previous crises that once threatened Africa’s economic stability, including HIV/AIDS and the COVID-19 pandemic.
During COVID-19, businesses shut down, unemployment surged and governments struggled to support collapsing economies. Yet communities, businesses and governments eventually coordinated responses that prevented even deeper social and economic damage.
“One of the biggest lessons from COVID-19 is that coordinated action can produce enormous social and economic results at the same time,” Kaberuka said.
He warned that fragmented interventions will no longer be enough as Africa’s population continues to grow. By 2070, nearly 45 percent of the world’s population could be African, creating both enormous pressure and enormous opportunity.
“Our young population can become a tremendous advantage if we invest properly in health, education, technology and jobs. Africa cannot afford to lose this generation and we should remember that policies matter, but execution matters even more,” he said.
Bringing the Delivery Room into the Boardroom
According to Paulin Basinga, the Africa Director at the Gates Foundation, the conversation is ultimately about bringing the realities of maternity wards into Africa’s executive boardrooms.
He described maternal, infant and neonatal deaths as “solvable problems” and said the private sector has already demonstrated its ability to innovate and navigate difficult environments.
As global development financing continues to decline, Basinga argued that African businesses must now play a more central role in protecting maternal and child health.
“We are entering a new era in which global contributions are declining. That means Africa’s own response has become even more critical, and the role of the private sector is now indispensable,” he said.
Tanzanian businessman Edha Nahdi, Group Managing Director of Amsons Group of Companies, gave an emotional testimony from which a personal story shifted the discussion from statistics to human reality.
Nahdi recalled visiting a public hospital in Tanzania in 2017 during a corporate social responsibility outreach. Inside the maternity ward, he found mothers who had just delivered babies lying on the floor beside their newborns because the hospital had no available beds. The women had spread traditional kangas on the ground as makeshift bedding. Unfortunately, such an example is all common in Africa. Kangas are rectangular cloths, usually measuring roughly 1.5m by 1m, worn as traditional garments by women (and sometimes men) across East Africa.
“I was shocked. That moment stayed with me. It made me realize that maternal and child healthcare is not just a statistic or a policy issue, it is a human reality affecting people every single day,” Nahdi recalled.
In many ways, behind every maternal health statistic is a mother fighting to survive, a child whose future hangs in the balance, and a continent whose economic future may depend on how urgently it responds.
