Addressing the COVID-19 crisis in Africa: Expertise France launches a Technical Assistance Platform

To address the health emergency, partner countries must be rapidly assisted with the implementation of relevant and targeted actions where needs are not covered, while maintaining the activities of essential services. The objective: minimise as much as possible the impact of the pandemic on the health of populations in Africa, as recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO).

In this respect, the Technical Assistance Platform led by Expertise France is composed of a documentary base and a network of experts working in partner countries. This Platform contributes to supporting partner countries and the dialogue with technical and financial partners mobilised for the COVID pandemic. It will mobilise validated public health knowledge while taking into account local conditions and information from the field. The mechanism is led by a team of French and international experts mobilised by the headquarters of Expertise France.

Providing technical assistance to partner countries

The main mission of the platform will be to share the experiences of various countries, including France, the validated knowledge and WHO recommendations.

Through its network of technical experts in countries, the EF/COVID-HEALTH platform provides:

• Technical assistance for structuring responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, in full coordination with the local WHO and technical and financial partners;

• Reliable documentation, sorted and regularly updated, selected by field experts for partners;

• Support for reorganising ongoing technical cooperation projects with our partner donors in order to adapt activities.

This Platform has been designed in a context of crisis and travel restrictions and may develop and be adapted to changes in the pandemic situation.

The priority countries are countries where the health systems are the most fragile and/or where Expertise France has an immediately available capacity of expertise: Burkina Faso, Burundi, Central African Republic, Chad, Côte d’Ivoire, Democratic Republic of Congo, Guinea Conakry, Mali and Niger. The platform will gradually be extended to other countries based on the lessons learned from the ongoing implementation and the availability of a focal point in Team France to act as an intermediary between the platform and national authorities.

Network of public health experts mobilised

The Platform is managed in Paris by Expertise France’s Health Department and includes public health specialists from the public sector, the academic and research community and the voluntary sector. The experts are specialists in various key subjects (public health, health crisis management, strengthening health systems, crisis communication, epidemiology, health products, etc.). They will be mobilised depending on the needs that will be expressed by partner countries, via the “country focal point” experts who are members of the Platform in the field.

These country focal points of the platform based in partner countries are in daily contact with the national authorities. They are health experts who act as an intermediary with the various stakeholders involved in the response to the pandemic (governments, health authorities, WHO, regional surveillance networks, donors, technical partners…). Their mission is to disseminate relevant information from the Platform’s documentary base and inform about the needs and contexts of countries to ensure they are taken into account in Paris.

Partnership-based response to the health crisis

The Platform’s actions will be part of the “Partners Platform” coordinated at international level by WHO. They are an integral part of the “Covid-19 – Health in Common” initiative launched by Agence Française de Développement (AFD) in response to the global health crisis. This French initiative will provide a targeted, coordinated and partnership-based response to the unprecedented crisis in developing countries.

Furthermore, in addition to the technical assistance provided by the EF/COVID-HEALTH Platform, the 5% Initiative facility, which is managed by Expertise France and supports the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, has temporarily adapted its working methods to provide support to its current partners, with Africa a priority, via a reprogramming and additional financing. It is coordinating its support with the support provided by the EF/COVID-HEALTH Platform.