We, Members of Parliament from 11 African countries – Cameroon, Chad, Côte d’Ivoire, Malawi, Namibia, Sierra Leone, South Sudan, The Gambia, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe, met at the IMNHC Conference 2026 in Nairobi, Kenya. We engaged in expert discussions on accelerating access to life-saving, quality-assured reproductive, maternal, and newborn health commodities, increasing sustainable financing, and strengthening care provided by midwives who can cost-effectively deliver 90% of all essential reproductive, maternal, newborn, child, and adolescent health.

While we recognize the good progress in improving the quality of women’s lives in our countries, we are cognizant and committed that more action needs to be made to save lives and improve the quality of care of the women and newborns.

To transform this vision into reality, we commit to exercising our legislative, budgetary, and oversight functions to:

• Strengthen sustainable health financing for resilient health systems: Support increased domestic investment for resilient health systems, and for women and newborns in particular, including progress toward the Abuja Declaration targets, and promoting transparent and effective use of allocated resources. Enforce our oversight function to ensure our country’s national health public appropriated budget is executed and delivers outcomes for women and newborns.
• Ensure access to quality-assured MNH commodities: Advocate for clear and dedicated budget provisions to ensure consistent availability of life-saving, quality-assured maternal and newborn health commodities and ensure they are sustainably and equitably accessible.
• Support regional collaboration and pooled procurement: Encourage collaboration, including through the Africa Pooled Procurement Mechanism and other regional pooling and market shaping mechanisms to improve efficiency, affordability, and access to essential reproductive, quality maternal and newborn health commodities.
• Improve supply, distribution and delivery systems and access to medicines: Promote efforts to strengthen procurement, regulation, and distribution systems so that quality-assured MNH medicines reach all communities to the last mile without interruption.
• Ensure universal coverage of care provided by midwives: Establishing the legal framework to ensure midwives can practice for their full scope in compliance with the globally accredited Midwifery Models of care, and ensuring increased domestic allocation to the training, recruitment, deployment, and retention of midwives, alongside practical incentives, such as tax breaks and housing allowances, to support their work and encourage them to serve where they are most needed.
• Ensure the highest level of political anchoring and prioritization of efforts to accelerate the reduction of maternal and newborn mortality and morbidity at national and regional levels, including within the Pan-African Parliament, and centering the role of parliamentarians and parliamentary leadership in budgetary allocation, regulatory oversight, and advocacy to ensure the holistic implementation of multisectoral strategies and programmes to ensure tangible outcomes for women and newborns.

We welcome the strong government leadership demonstrated by the 36 country-led delegations and encourage efforts by all partners to align under national priorities, build and sustain political momentum and financing across the African continent, through the Campaign on Accelerated Reduction of Maternal Mortality and ongoing efforts to operationalize regional country initiatives including the Accelerated Reduction of Maternal Mortality in West and Central Africa through high-level political anchoring and multisectoral approaches, and renewed resolve to achieve the 90/90/80/80 Every Woman, Every Newborn, Everywhere (EWENE) coverage targets and targets for social determinants.

As Members of Parliament, we stand ready to support efforts across our countries and beyond, and renew our commitment to pushing our governments to realise the 15% budgetary allocations to health, enshrined in the Abuja Declaration, and to doubling efforts towards domestic resource mobilization and sustainable financing for maternal and newborn health outcomes.

United in common purpose and determined to invest in the future of our women, girls, and newborns, we endorse this commitment and undertake to stand as guardians of the health of every mother and every newborn in our countries.

Hon. Berthe Nanga Mefant ép. Owono, Hon. Abderamane Djasnabaye, Hon. Nadine Gneba, Hon. Abdoulie Njai, Hon. Tiaone Hendele, Hon. Lilani Brinkman, Hon. Johnny Tamba Simeon, Hon. Majur Babur Ajal Mundo, Hon. Josephine Bebona, Hon. Brenda Nyirenda, Hon. Mutsa Murombedzi

Adopted at the IMNHC 2026
Nairobi, Kenya, March 2026

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