Case Study: Bridging the Malaria Funding Gap in Asia Pacific
Project Type: Rapid landscape review and design
Project Duration: 15 weeks in 2024
Client: Asia Pacific Leaders Malaria Alliance (APLMA)
Geographical Area(s): Regional and Indonesia
Sector(s): Health, malaria
How to Ignite Asian Funding for Public Health?
Asia Pacific has made good progress towards malaria elimination, with 20 countries certified as malaria-free¹. However, recent progress has slowed, and the region is offtrack to meet its overall 2030 malaria elimination target. A key driver behind this is the almost $500 million shortfall of malaria funding in the region².​​​
The Asia Pacific Leaders Malaria Alliance (APLMA) is a regional body, providing important technical advocacy and evidence-based policy support to the 22 governments that it unites³. In light of the region’s funding gap, APLMA was keen to explore the potential of innovative finance to accelerate malaria elimination efforts in Asia Pacific.
To respond to this objective, Real Impact Advisors (RIA) partnered with Social Finance UK (SF), recognising the potential to leverage each organisation’s strengths. The partnership combined RIA’s knowledge of the region and funding community, with SF’s expertise in designing and implementing innovative financing mechanisms.
¹Source: WHO’s Global Malaria Programme Website
²Source: APLMA’s Dashboard figure based on analysis of the funding allocations from The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (GFATM) to Asian Pacific countries in its 2023-25 funding cycle
³Source: APLMA’s Website
A Partnership Approach That Leverages RIA's Asia Expertise
Through the project, RIA and SF sought to answer the following questions:
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How is the malaria funding landscape in the region characterised?
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Which geographies and malaria interventions in the region are best suited for innovative finance?
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What could the high-level design of an innovative financing mechanism look like for this area?
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What are funders’ interests and challenges in participating in such a mechanism?
RIA conducted a rapid assessment of the region’s funding landscape to identify active malaria and public health funders -- including multilateral, bilateral, philanthropic, and private funders -- as well as potential entry points and pathways to engage them in such a project, based on their funding style, risk appetite, quantum and interest areas.
A Breakdown of Asia Pacific's Malaria Funding
Image Source: APLMA's Leaders' Dashboard
RIA also provided invaluable insight on funding trends that identified the focus geography for the project.
In parallel, SF supplemented with analysis on the region’s malaria sector to prioritise geographies and interventions that could be suitable for innovative financing. This included factors like a country’s broader ecosystem readiness, intervention applicability, operational feasibility, and potential for impact.​​
Based on this, SF developed a high-level design for a malaria financing facility. RIA then tested and iterated on this design via direct engagement with selected regional funders to understand their early feedback, potential interest and initial considerations.
After some iterations to the design, the partners hosted a roundtable event with APLMA, bringing together stakeholders from the public, private and philanthropic sectors.
This broader market engagement offered additional feedback on the mechanism’s key features, such as the allocation of funding, sourcing of interventions, and governance of implementation.
The Role of Philanthropy in Crowding Bigger Funding
The project identified that a financing facility, which focuses on pooling philanthropic funding to complement existing institutional and domestic funding, has good potential to support malaria elimination efforts in Asia Pacific. Philanthropic funding not only helps to bridge the region’s funding gap, but also supports promising programmatic innovations that institutional and domestic funding cannot. We also found that there can be good alignment between regional philanthropic funders’ existing priorities and malaria, even if this is an area they are not currently funding.​
However, the project highlighted the complexities of different country contexts, and therefore, the advantages of piloting a country mechanism first, instead of a region-wide one. Indonesia was identified as a suitable candidate with a government that is willing to engage.
Combining Expertise with the Right Stakeholders Towards Impact
The project succeeded in delivering the initial concept and high-level design for both a regional and Indonesian malaria financing facility, including potential interventions in Indonesia that the facility could support. Preliminary market testing confirmed initial interest in the facility and surfaced key considerations to inform its continued design.​
The work laid a solid foundation for APLMA to continue to build upon. For example, they convened key Indonesian stakeholders at the Malaria Financing Consultative Forum in September 2024 to discuss support for the launch of an Indonesian Malaria Financing Facility (IMFF).
Image Source: APLMA’s LinkedIn