A new fund aimed at improving the survival of mothers and newborns in Africa has been launched, backed by philanthropists including Tsitsi and Strive Masiyiwa and the Gates Foundation.
The Beginnings Fund, managed by an investments team based in Nairobi, plans to deploy $500 million over the next five years to help save more than 300,000 lives and provide care for 34 million women and newborns across sub-Saharan Africa
It will operate in Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Lesotho, Nigeria, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zimbabwe, focusing on low-cost interventions and personnel in high-burden hospitals. The work will track and target the key reasons babies and mothers die, including infection, severe bleeding for mothers, and respiratory distress for infants.
Tsitsi Masiyiwa says: “In collaboration with African governments and organisations, the Beginnings Fund will make targeted investments in the products, people, and systems required to improve and scale the quality of maternal and newborn care, with the aim to prevent over 300,000 avoidable deaths and expand access to quality care for 34 million mothers and babies by 2030.”
The fund is being launched at a critical time, when international donor aid is shrinking. The world has made major progress in reducing newborn and maternal deaths, halving the neonatal mortality rate between 1990 and 2022. But that progress has stagnated or even reversed in nearly all regions in the last few years, according to the World Health Organiastion, which has warned that aid cuts could make this worse. Africa accounts for 70% of maternal deaths globally.
Strive Masiyiwa, speaking on his wife Tsitsi’s leadership in the effort, said: “Our family foundation, Delta Philanthropies, works internationally, and Tsitsi has been at the forefront of mobilising support for this initiative. She has worked tirelessly for more than a year, building partnerships for a fund we couldn’t realise on our own.”
He added that the concept for the fund was born during a Zoom call with partners at the ELMA Foundation, moved by a tragic report about a woman who lost her triplets in a hospital.
Elizabeth Tanya Masiyiwa, President and CEO of Delta Philanthropies and the Higherlife Foundation, will serve on the investment committee of the fund.
In addition to Delta Philanthropies and the Gates Foundation, the fund is supported by the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation, ELMA Foundation, Mohamed bin Zayed Foundation for Humanity, Patchwork Collective, and the Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation.
