Health Policy Watch: African Leaders Declare End of Aid Era at Nairobi World Health Summit, But The Data Tell a More Complicated Story

29 April 2026

Health Policy Watch news story

African leaders opened the World Health Summit Regional Meeting at the United Nations complex in Nairobi, Kenya (April 27-29) with a unified declaration that two decades of dependence on foreign aid for health is over.

“The challenge that I see is that many of the leaders in our continent believe that it is somebody else’s responsibility. It should be the World Health Organization, USAID, I don’t know who,” Kenyan President William Ruto told the Summit.

“The sooner we realise that it is our responsibility to raise especially domestic resources to fund our health, the better for all of us.”

The Nairobi meeting, the first co-organised by the World Health Organization and the World Health Summit, has positioned itself as the continent’s first high-level response to the collapse of official development assistance for health, which fell by an estimated $31.1 billion in 2025, according to the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.

Read the full news story here.

*Image credit: ONE Data

 

Source: Health Policy Watch