Securing Budget Lines, Creating Coalitions: The Budget Advocacy Accelerator Graduates Deliver Results

You're invited to celebrate the graduation of the 2025-2026 cohort of the CSO Budget Advocacy Accelerator: September 15, 2026 at 9:00 AM ET | 2:00 PM UTC. RSVP here. 

Ahead of the ceremony, here's a look at what this cohort achieved. 

Over 10 months, GHAI's Advocacy Accelerator strengthened the capacity of 12 civil society organizations (CSOs) from 11 countries across Africa and Asia to influence domestic health financing, combining hands-on learning, expert mentorship and peer exchange. Through capstone projects spanning cardiovascular health, drowning prevention, health security, mental health, road safety and tobacco control, this cohort achieved concrete results. 

Budget Lines Won 

The Mathiwos Wondu Foundation (MWF), Ethiopia advocated successfully for the first dedicated tobacco control budget line in Addis Ababa's history.  

A four-month test allocation of $93,464 was effectively utilized, resulting in the Finance Bureau designating an increased allocation of $750,000 for the coming fiscal year.   

“Addis Ababa is Africa’s foremost political and diplomatic hub, hosting the headquarters of the African Union,“ said team MWF. “We strongly believe that this dedicated fund will make a difference in tobacco control, and that will make Addis an exemplary for other African cities. It will have a domino effect.” 

Coalitions Built  

Trailblazer Initiative (TBI), Nigeria, established and serves as the secretariat for a 17-member Civil Society Coalition on Noncommunicable Diseases (NCD) and Tobacco Control and also established a state Technical Working Group for tobacco control that includes several government ministries, CSOs, teaching hospitals academics and other state actors. Their advocacy engagement also resulted in a high-level commitment from Oyo State's Ministry of Health, Ministry of Budget and Economic Planning and House of Assembly toward a dedicated tobacco control and NCD budget line.  

TBI described how quickly stakeholders moved: “We learnt that we could achieve a lot within a short period of time - you don't have to have a project lifespan ranging from 12 to 15 months.”  

Health Rights Advocacy Forum (HERAF), Kenya, established the country's first Mental Health Financing Advocacy Coalition (MHFAC) with a ratified governance framework and an elected steering committee. The 30 foundational MHAC members have increased visibility for mental health financing within both the national legislature and the Nyeri County assembly.  

Agendas Advanced 

My Age, Zimbabwe: The Masvingo City Health Department has recognized mental health as a priority, committing to strengthen its inclusion in the 2027 local budget. Through this initiative, My Age also helped build lasting civic engagement by empowering over 160 community members to participate directly in local budget processes, while reaching more than 3,000 people through community radio discussions. 

Somosti, Bangladesh, secured government commitment to sustain and expand the national Community-based Childcare Centers for Drowning Prevention Program. Somosti achieved this through an integrated advocacy strategy combining media advocacy, evidence generation, budget advocacy, policy engagement and direct lobbying. It organized journalist field visits to childcare centers and facilitated national TV discussions and news reports, while supporting editorials, op-eds and reports in print and online media. These media outputs not only raised public and policy attention but also generated evidence, highlighting the scale of child drowning, the effectiveness of community-based interventions, and the need for sustained public financing. Somosti also raised the issue in pre-budget discussions organized by the Ministry of Finance and civil society budget networks, and lobbied the Ministry of Women and Children Affairs, relevant ministries and Members of Parliament. This combined approach helped translate evidence and public demand into policy and financing support for renewal and expansion of the program.  

CPDI, Pakistan secured commitments from the Women's Parliamentary Caucus of Provincial Legislative Assembly of Balochistan, the Balochistan Union of Journalists and the Deputy Speaker's Office toward a dedicated diabetes and cardiovascular disease budget line for Balochistan province. Team CPDI attributes this success to the "One Ask, One Number, One Angle" strategy: translating dense budget data into something each audience can act on, rather than handing over a multi-page spreadsheet. Team CPDI were surprised by the engagement of the journalists: “This is the very first time that all the journalists not only understood the numbers and the severity of the situation, but they also added a human and emotional angle to it that led to signing of a commitment pledge for highlighting the issue in media.” 

Evidence Generated 

SERAC-Bangladesh, scaled up its Volunteer Peer Leader model, placing young volunteers trained in mental health at government adolescent health facilities. Facilities with peer leaders in place saw adolescent visitor numbers rise by as much as 300%. Following SERAC's advocacy, the Director General of Health Services officially submitted a request to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare seeking approval to include the model within the national adolescent health program. 

“The primary win is that the government, especially the implementing agency, has recognized it.” Said team SERAC. “They put this on their official proposal and sent it to the superior authority, the Ministry, to approve.”  

Connected Development (CODE), Nigeria, independently investigated and publicly disclosed data on disbursements through the NCDC Gateway, using Freedom of Information requests, field investigations and stakeholder engagements in Kano and Adamawa states. The investigation uncovered significant delays, transparency gaps and administrative bottlenecks affecting access to and utilization of epidemic preparedness funds. 

“This is the first time that an independent CSO in Nigeria has managed to publish data of the disbursement to the NCDC Gateway,” said the CODE investigation team. Following the presentation of its findings, CODE continued to engage relevant government stakeholders and committed to tracking the commitments made to improve transparency and accountability around the funds. 

The initiative also strengthened collaboration among journalists and civil society organisations working to track epidemic preparedness financing and promote greater accountability at the subnational level. As the CODE team noted, “We’ll continue to push, we’ll continue to follow up to ensure that what they committed to doing, they actually do.” 

AIP Foundation ran capstones in both Viet Nam and Cambodia. In Viet Nam, the team focused on strengthening provincial readiness for Viet Nam’s forthcoming Safe School Zone Basic Standard. In Lào Cai province, the team assessed five schools along National Highway 70, identified key road safety risks and developed recommendations to support future provincial planning and implementation. 

In Cambodia, the team engaged local government leaders and factory managers and developed awareness materials to build the case for directing government resources to road safety enforcement and increasing factory worker helmet use.  

"The Academy helped me think more clearly about the pathway from evidence to political commitment and implementation, and ultimately to policy wins and budgeting," said team AIP Foundation Viet Nam. 

Living Goods, Uganda, translated Uganda's national epidemic preparedness priorities into feasible, costed district-level interventions in Wakiso and Mayuge districts, getting preparedness activities considered in FY2026/27 district plans and budgets. 

“We were really pleasantly surprised that the districts took an interest in understanding how they could better budget and plan for these activities, involving the health facility in-charges and other angles of district engagement.” Said team Living Goods. “After this really intense engagement at sub-national level you can actually quote district officials saying that with the resources they have through primary health care funds, they will allocate a portion of this to support the community health workers.” 

VAST, Ghana, developed an evidence-based advocacy tool documenting Ghana's progress in tobacco excise taxation, identifying key policy gaps and recommending reforms to strengthen the system in line with World Health Organization (WHO) benchmarks, then used that evidence to engage the Ministry of Finance, the Ghana Revenue Authority and the Parliamentary Select Committee on Finance on the urgent need for Ghana to protect public health and boost government revenue mobilisation. The advocacy tool also provided technical inputs into the drafting of the Excise Tax Bill of 2026. 

Healthcare Federation (HFL), Liberia, generated evidence and collected best practices to guide future epidemic preparedness and response planning in Liberia. They worked to direct existing outbreak response funding toward existing bottlenecks in early detection of suspected Mpox cases and strengthening with the Ministry of Health, the National Public Health Institute of Liberia  as well as improving private facilities health workers' knowledge and skills on suspected Mpox cases and infection prevention and control measures in Montserrado County.