Africa Public Health Foundation (APHF), founded in late 2019, is the partnership platform for the Africa Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC). The Foundation exists to forge partnerships and mobilize resources for the Africa CDC to support critical public health activities across the continent.

Being a nascent organization with a critical mandate, APHF’s leadership team recognized the immediate need for a dedicated Secretariat of a nimble, highly skilled team able to operationalize the vision of APHF. As such, APHF brought onboard seconded capacity from Dalberg Implement for immediate surge capacity. The interim Secretariat’s specific priority is to design and roll out organizational systems and processes to strengthen APHF’s capabilities.

To do this, Dalberg employed the DIT Model to bring rapid and sustainable transformation through co-designing initiatives and programs with the client, implementing solutions in a catalytic manner by providing initial surge capacity where it didn’t exist, supporting the identification and retention of full-time capacity, and transferring people and capabilities, tools, processes, and systems to the client to ensure deep sustainable impact.

The Dalberg team set up, operated, and managed the Secretariat on behalf of APHF for a period of 12 – 18 months. The specific tasks included:

1. Providing the required hands-on capacity to implement immediate priorities as agreed with APHF, and with input from key stakeholders
2. Fully standing up APHF, working collaboratively with APHF, Africa CDC, and other partners
3. Facilitating smooth handover of built internal capacity and systems to APHF internal staff

In the immediate term, Dalberg’s work enabled APHF to set up systems to disburse critical funds to Africa CDC to support Covid-19 responses in Africa. Over the long term, Dalberg established a journey of travel pathway for APHF and conducted a successful handover to permanently hired APHF staff to undertake the long-term vision to improve public health systems across the African continent.