The Government of Zanzibar, in partnership with PharmAccess, won the prestigious World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) Prize in the e-Health category. The award is presented by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) together with several United Nations agencies.
PharmAccess innovates and scales through partners. Our ability to reach millions of people across Sub-Saharan Africa depends on collaboration with governments, private sector actors, and global coalitions. Local evidence drives our international engagement and agenda setting, and international partnerships accelerate local impact.
The Dutch government: a long-term, committed partner
The Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, including its embassies in our focus countries, is our most important long-term institutional partner. This collaboration has made it possible to develop, test, and implement our programs alongside both government and private sector partners in Africa. The support enables us to pursue our work holistically rather than through fragmented projects. The Ministry's Global Health Strategy 2023-2030 — focusing on health systems strengthening, innovation and private sector inclusion — reflects priorities we have built together.
Dutch institutional partners
The Dutch Postcode Loterij has provided funding since 2015, contributing to PharmAccess’ mission and impact. FMO and Philips have invested directly in the Medical Credit Fund (MCF), strengthening its capacity to extend affordable loans to health providers across Sub-Saharan Africa. Through our partnership with Invest International and Delft Imaging, diagnostic technology for maternal healthcare is being deployed in Kisumu, Kenya, connecting Dutch innovation directly to frontline healthcare delivery while stimulating economic activity in both countries. PharmAccess co-leads the Dutch Global Health Hub, supporting implementation of the government's global health strategy. Through the Dutch Global Health Alliance, we advance shared positions on health financing and digitalization, while the Dutch Task Force for Health Care and the Netherlands African Business Council connect us to the private sector networks shaping trade and investment between the Netherlands and Africa.
PharmAccess and Transform Health collaborate to host discussion on health data governance during the Africa Health Tech Summit in Kigali (2026).
Global partners and coalitions
Internationally, PharmAccess works with institutions and coalitions that shape global health policy, ensuring that evidence generated in our focus countries informs the broader agenda on healthcare innovation. We collaborate with the WHO, World Economic Forum and Africa CDC on digital health transformation and data governance. Through UHC2030 and Transform Health, we advance joint advocacy on financing, data, and patient-centric care models. Together with the World Bank and Access Accelerated's Financing Accelerator Network for NCDs, we work to close the persistent financing gap for non-communicable diseases in low- and middle-income countries — a challenge that remains critically underfunded relative to its burden.
Development Finance Institutions BII and Swedfund share our conviction that private sector investment is essential to resilient health systems, and their engagement in MCF reflects broader confidence in our investment-oriented approach to healthcare. The Gates Foundation supports the expansion of digital lending through MCF, directly benefiting female entrepreneurs seeking to grow sustainable healthcare businesses.
Our donors go beyond funding, bringing expertise, forging collaborations and amplifying our advocacy across public, private and corporate sectors. Grand Challenges Canada contributed to developing SafeCare's green standards; the John C. Martin Foundation drives supports maternal and childcare innovation through mobile technology and data sharing; and Helmsley Charitable Trust is institutionalizing SafeCare and Med4All across Christian Health Association clinics in Ghana. Pfizer Foundation's Fellows program built investment cases in Zanzibar and Ghana; Achmea Foundation pioneers a pharmacy-first diagnostics model in Nigeria; Sanofi integrates NCD patient groups into local health systems; and MSD for Mothers advances our maternal health agenda and supports SafeCare's expansion into India. The Digital Connected Care Coalition — bringing together Philips, AXA, and Swiss Re — accelerates private sector involvement in viable digital health business models as a tangible pathway to UHC. Through the Reproductive Health Supplies Coalition, we advance access to essential reproductive health commodities, reinforcing our maternal and child health work and our commitment to achieving universal health coverage in its fullest sense.
Postcode Loterij: enabling innovation
One of the unique strengths of our partnership with the Postcode Loterij is its flexibility: it allows PharmAccess to invest in early-stage innovation, testing ideas that are still unproven, but have the potential to fundamentally improve how health systems work.
MomCare is a good example of what this makes possible. As a patient-centered maternal health platform, MomCare brings together financing, care delivery, and data into one connected system. It was designed to address a very practical problem: for many women, pregnancy care is fragmented and often paid for out of pocket — critical information is not shared across providers, risks are missed, and care is delayed.
MomCare tackles this by organizing care around the full pregnancy journey. Women are enrolled in a care bundle that covers antenatal visits, delivery, and postnatal care, removing financial uncertainty and making access to care more predictable.
A key part of the model is journey tracking
A healthy pregnancy requires more contact with the health system than many people realize. International guidelines recommend 8 or more antenatal check-ups, facility-based delivery, postnatal care, and newborn immunizations. Most women don't complete this journey. MomCare changes this by tracking each woman's journey over time and across providers. Through simple mobile tools, women receive reminders, health information, and follow-up messages that help them stay engaged in their care. Providers can see whether patients are on track, identify risks earlier, and follow up when something is missed. At the same time, payers gain insight into what care is delivered, at what cost, and with what outcomes.
This creates something that is often missing in healthcare systems: a continuous view of care.
For mothers, the impact is very tangible. They are more likely to attend essential antenatal visits, receive timely diagnostics, and get support when complications arise. Digital follow-up and remote consultations also make it easier to stay connected to care without disrupting daily life.
At the same time, the model generates data that can be used to improve the system as a whole. By linking care delivery, quality, and outcomes to financing, MomCare supports a shift toward value-based care — where providers are rewarded for better results, not just more services
Built from the ground up — and still learning
We built MomCare from scratch when mobile phones were just beginning to reach lower-income communities and digitization in healthcare was still in its earliest stages. That meant figuring out which messages women actually responded to, how to design tools that frontline health workers could use without extensive training, and how to connect data across fragmented systems.
The flexibility of Postcode Loterij funding made this possible. It gave us the space to experiment, to fail, to iterate, and to keep going until we had something that genuinely worked in the real world.
We now know what it takes to keep women engaged across a full pregnancy journey, how to make care coordination work at scale, and how to generate data that is meaningful for both providers and payers. Governments and health systems across the region are now adopting and scaling what we have built.
But the work is not finished. The same flexible funding that allowed us to build MomCare from nothing now allows us to keep pushing the frontier. We are currently exploring how artificial intelligence — connected to a woman's health record and applied responsibly — can further improve care for pregnant women. This means smarter risk detection, more timely support, and better outcomes, without adding complexity for the women or providers at the center of it.
Grateful for the support of our incredible partners.
