Nigerian Govs Partner with Grand Challenges Nigeria to Cut Maternal, Newborn Deaths Across States
- President Tinubu's aide warned that health research sitting on paper without real-world application was costing Nigerian mothers and newborns their lives
- Grand Challenges Nigeria has funded 10 locally developed health projects with up to N60 million each since the initiative launched in November 2024
- Speakers at the NGF annual meeting called on state governments to commit funding and set clear timelines for adopting successful health innovations
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Abuja, FCT - The Nigerian Governors' Forum (NGF) and Grand Challenges Nigeria held their Annual Meeting and Innovation Exchange on Friday, bringing together government officials, researchers and development partners to review locally developed health innovations and map out how to bring them to scale across Nigeria.
Uju-Rochas Anwukah, the Senior Special Assistant to President Bola Tinubu on Public Health in the Office of the Vice-President, used the occasion to press state governments to move beyond talk and begin funding the kind of innovations capable of reducing maternal and newborn deaths. She cautioned that promising ideas could not be left as documents gathering dust while the communities they were designed to serve continued to suffer.
Source: UGC
"Too many promising ideas end up as reports on a shelf, while the families they were meant to help never feel the difference. This meeting is about closing that gap," Anwukah said.
Grand Challenges Nigeria Funding and Progress
Anwukah, who also chairs the Grand Challenges Nigeria board, said the initiative had provided seed funding of up to N60 million each to 10 Nigerian-led projects since it was set up. Eight of those projects were showcased at the meeting, giving innovators a platform to engage with potential partners who could take their work further. She recalled that Vice-President Kashim Shettima launched the programme at the State House two years ago, making Nigeria the seventh African country to join the Grand Challenges network.
She was clear that donor-dependent projects which shut down once grants expire should not be counted as wins.
"A pilot that ends when the grant ends is not a success at all. It is a missed opportunity," she added.
For interventions to succeed at scale, she said credible evidence, institutional ownership, well-equipped frontline health workers and sustainable financing were all essential.
Calls for Coordinated Action
Senior Programme Officer at the Gates Foundation, Alem Hadera Abay, pointed out that Nigeria continued to record troubling maternal and child mortality figures even as some child health indicators had improved, and urged the country to push harder towards its World Health Assembly and Sustainable Development Goals commitments.
The Permanent Secretary of the Federal Ministry of Innovation, Science and Technology, Dr Mukhtar Yawale Muhammad, stressed that potential users and implementing institutions should be brought into research processes from the start, rather than being approached only after a pilot phase had ended.
Representing the NGF Director-General, Dr Abdulateef O.T. Shittu, the Head of Health Team, Dr Chinekwu Oreh, said innovation efforts must be grounded in the practical realities of Nigeria's health system.
"The question before us is therefore not simply what innovations exist, but which ones work, under what conditions, and how we can make them available to more Nigerians," he said.
Chimdi D. Owundiegu of Dalberg pointed to the proposed National Research Institute as a possible tool for reducing fragmentation in research funding, but stressed it would need strong public and private sector partnerships to deliver measurable results for maternal and child health.
Source: UGC
NGF, Partners Unveil Plans to Scale 8 Health Innovations
Earlier, Legit.ng reported that the NGF and Grand Challenges Nigeria (GCNg) on Friday, November 13, 2026, held their Annual Meeting and Innovation Exchange in Abuja, where stakeholders examined how locally led health research can move from testing to practical use across Nigeria.
The event took place at Lake Greenfield Hotel and will draw together state governments, research institutions, development partners and financing bodies to discuss pathways for adopting and scaling evidence-based health innovations nationwide.
Source: Legit.ng
