Ebera Okereke of Chatham House argues that the America First Global Health Strategy provides potential opportunities for African countries, despite being designed as strategic asset for the benefit of the USA. She suggests that recipient countries respond strategically, to 1) reclaim the narrative regarding the dependency that was largely created by donor countries, 2) to negotiate collectively to increase the leverage and strength of the dependent countries, 3) to accelerate domestic investment in health-related activities via earmarked taxes, excise levies, pooled procurement, and national health insurance schemes, 4) to resist tied aid to protect Africa’s industrial policy, and 5) to insist on reciprocity in sharing of surveillance and data. She says that all of these responses will require leadership and strong political will. However, she reminds us that the groundwork has been laid via the 2023 Lusaka Agenda, and the 2025 Accra Summit and the New Public Health Order. These agreements provide the basis for substantive structural change to reduce dependency and move toward real decolonization. She calls on leadership to “Seize the moment and leverage shifting donor priorities to accelerate our own”…and to be “architects of our own future.”
See her piece in Think Global Health.