Advancing Service Delivery in Namibia: UNICEF and USAID's Initiatives for Efficient Health Procurement

UNICEF, with support from USAID, proposed a cocktail of interventions to leverage previous analytical work in procurement for health in Namibia, to help strengthen efficiencies and procurement reforms to achieve better value for money and improved service delivery at community level. These involve reviewing and mapping of all key recommendations from past analytical work that have not been acted upon; supporting the Ministry of Finance (MoF) to convene health sector procurement stakeholders to dialogue and agree on best options to resolve existing bottlenecks; and capacity strengthening on health procurement. Additional analytical work focusing on exploring the expansion and formalization of pooled procurement is essential to close gaps from previous studies.

UNICEF contracted hera to perform the above-mentioned tasks. hera’s work focused on supporting and building consensus between the MoF and Ministry of Health and Social Services (MoHSS) as well as key partners on practical PFM solutions to improve service delivery in the health sector, ensuring value for money and sustaining service provision for impact. The identified key actions informed the ongoing procurement reforms and long-term reforms to resolve existing PFM bottlenecks in health. In undertaking the assignment, hera completed a two-pronged approach: 

1.      Emphasizing the use of existing knowledge and providing technical assistance to the MoF by reviewing and compiling the key lessons and recommendations from past analytical work, which identified how the current procurement system negatively impact health sector procurement efficiency. The review focused on existing evidence with regards to other public financial management (PFM) related bottlenecks and possible solutions to inform on-going reforms. This culminated in a series of dialogues between the MoF, MoHSS and partners to prioritize issues, and develop an action plan to respond. 

2.      Filling analytical gaps on PFM inefficiencies not addressed in previous analysis. This generated additional evidence for consideration and discussion by the MoF and MoHSS. Recommendations from this analysis informed formalization and expansion of pooled procurement, including adjustments to the procurement regulatory framework. 

hera contracted several international and national experts to bring together extensive experience in all aspects of procurement, supply chain management and public finance management in the health sector. The hera team offered a phased approach and applied a mixed-method approach that provided the possibility of triangulation of various data sources and synthesis across the findings that are generated by the methods applied. The two-phase approach consisted of i) and inception phase and ii) data collection, analysis and reporting phase (gathering, reviewing and synthesis of past analytic evidence; filling gaps with new analytic evidence; cost best analysis of procurement options and Plan of Action development). Data collection included key informant interviews at global, regional and country level and a series of interactive online meetings to complement the information gathered through the KIIs. hera managed the whole process of co-creation of solutions between MOH and MOF.