In December 2025, The Challenge Initiative (TCI) won the Best Poster award at the Ouagadougou Partnership Annual Meeting (RAPO 2025) in Lomé, Togo. The award recognizes TCI’s poster exploring a practical sustainability question facing many health programs: how to help municipalities not only commit funds for family planning, but actually budget, release, and spend those resources over time.
What the Poster Showed
Across Francophone West Africa, decentralization has expanded municipalities’ responsibilities for health. But local governments often face limited management capacity, weak coordination with the health system, and an incomplete understanding of how family planning investments support local development.
TCI’s approach, as presented in the poster, combines managerial coaching, political advocacy, and financial engagement to integrate family planning into municipal plans and budgets.
How the Approach Works
The model starts with advocacy to mayors to enroll municipalities. Cities submit an Expression of Interest along with a letter of commitment from the mayor specifying a contribution amount. A dedicated bank account is opened to manage funds, and municipal councilors receive training on why investing in family planning matters. TCI also supports the creation of Advocacy and Monitoring Groups that continue financing advocacy beyond TCI’s direct involvement.
Over time, these steps help shift family planning from partner-supported activities to something municipalities plan and finance themselves.
Results across Ouagadougou Partnership Countries
Between 2016 and 2025, TCI expanded from 12 to 28 cities across six Ouagadougou Partnership countries (Benin, Burkina Faso, Cote d’Ivoire, Niger, Senegal, and Togo), training more than 1,000 local elected officials and health workers. The poster reported that additional family planning users in TCI intervention cities rose from 66,225 to 331,809.
Financing results (USD) were also summarized by time period:
- TCI Phase 1 (2016–2021): $1,000,081 committed; $423,924 spent (42% disbursement)
- TCI NextGen (2022–2025): $1,774,685 committed; $1,153,245 spent (65% disbursement)
- Total (2016–2025): $2,774,766 committed; $1,577,169 spent (57% disbursement)
RAPO 2025 emphasized the importance of domestic financing for sexual and reproductive health and family planning. TCI’s experience reinforces a clear lesson: engaging local elected officials is a powerful lever for sustainable FP financing, especially when paired with practical mechanisms that make budgeting and follow-through easier.
