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💥 Take Quick Action! Opportunities to create impact with a quick action are marked with a 💥 throughout the Playbook!
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🌟 Welcome to a special issue of Playbook, including a spotlight on our partner network Resilience Action Network Africa (RANA).
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One year ago, many of us gathered at the Conference on Public Health in Africa (CPHIA) in Lusaka to discuss the issues, opportunities, and challenges facing the continent. On the margins of CPHIA and in response to the mounting climate and health crisis, PAN helped launch its new partner Resilience Action Network Africa (RANA) as an independent, cross-cutting African civil society advocacy network focused on strengthening Africa’s resilience. RANA swiftly mobilized 50+ civil society organizations (CSOs) around an Agenda for Action calling on African leaders for new urgency and political resolve to prevent the next pandemic crisis.
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Making change happen.
The RANA CSO network — addressing climate, finance, food systems, gender, and health systems and R&D — is driving impact through a growing regional and national reach, paired with international engagement.
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Here’s a snapshot of RANA’s 2024 impact:
- Convening power. RANA’s network doubled since its launch to 60+ CSO partners. RANA regularly convenes partners and other networks on interconnected resilience issues, providing a monthly space for strategic coordination, joint advocacy, and access to high-level leaders across AU agencies. RANA also initiated issue-based working groups on finance and mpox.
- Mobilizing partners to mobilize $$$. Catalyzed by the International Development Association’s (IDA) Africa Heads of State Summit, RANA began coordinating development partners including CSOs, funders, and think tanks across interest areas. Together with the ONE Campaign, ACET, and others, RANA developed a memo which was sent to leaders. RANA also led the development and socialization of a letter calling on IDA shareholders and decision-makers to advance a historic and ambitious replenishment. RANA and partners furthered the message, pushing for an IDA that works for Africa at the World Bank Group-IMF Annual Meetings.
- Rapid response — mpox. Before the public health emergency was even declared, RANA quickly issued a statement with partners calling for urgent action and investment to protect people and stop the mpox outbreak’s spread. This was followed by an initial CSO coordination meeting with African and global partners and media to communicate the response’s needs to mobilize action, investment, and community engagement. RANA has since created a biweekly working group, a call to action to G20 leaders, a weekly mpox tracker analysis and recommendations, and shared priorities 100 days into the public health emergency. 💥 Reach out if you are interested in joining the Mpox Coordination Group.
- Driving country-level action! In September, the RANA Uganda Working Group launched as the first fully-fledged country-level RANA extension, bringing a diverse group of Uganda-based partners together to drive advocacy action on resilience. RANA’s Uganda Working Group recently participated in an Ugandan Ministry of Health meeting to call for increased mpox response urgency and equity.
- Elevating African priorities to the global stage and vice-versa. From the pandemic agreement negotiations and advancing development finance to medical countermeasures equity and mpox response, RANA has emerged as an advocacy voice to elevate local, national, and regional priorities to the global stage — creating a feedback loop. RANA played an early development and adoption role of Africa’s common climate change and health position, endorsed by African Ministers during the Africa Climate Summit. In May, RANA co-convened a 2024 World Health Assembly side event with PAN and the Africa-Europe Foundation to elevate the ROI of building climate- and pandemic-resilient health systems.
- 💥 Dive deeper on RANA’s 2024 impact and path forward by reading Aggrey Aluso’s latest blog.
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💥 We have work to do! 💥
Looking ahead to 2025, RANA’s key priorities will include:
- Fostering impactful partnerships. Like PAN, RANA is founded on the idea of radical collaboration, knowing that the challenges of climate, finance, food systems, gender, and health systems and R&D, economic inequality, and building resilience are too complex and too interconnected for any one stakeholder to tackle alone. 💥 Are you an African CSO interested in joining RANA? Reach out!
- Elevating African financing priorities. Looking beyond the IDA21 replenishment in December, the coming year will be a big year for development finance — with critical implications for the African continent. RANA and partners will seize the momentum and focus on pushing for African development financing priorities in key fora such as the 4th International Conference on Financing for Development.
- Capitalizing on South Africa’s G20 leadership. As Brazil passes the leadership baton to South Africa, the coming G20 offers a unique opportunity for Global South leadership to advance the resilience agenda.
- Amplifying: Climate + health = resilient health systems. Since COP28, RANA and partners have been calling for investment in resilient health systems. Africa remains most vulnerable to the twin threats of climate change and pandemics. RANA is working to mobilize partners to connect finance with practical roadmaps to build resilient systems.
- Strengthening country-level action. Building on RANA’s country-level growth in Uganda, RANA aims to stand up additional country-level working groups in 2025. Discussions are already underway with partners in Kenya, Rwanda, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, and South Africa. 💥 If you represent a CSO in these countries, reach out to RANA about joining the network.
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Thank you to each of our PAN and RANA partners and those who choose to join the RANA network in pursuit of a future that is more resilient to the crises of the present and those around the corner.
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🦋 Hello Bluesky! You can now find PAN and RANA on Bluesky. 💥 If you are on Bluesky, please give us a follow and share your handle with us to ensure we are highlighting our partner network in starter packs and in general.
This week marks 100 days since the mpox outbreak Public Health Emergency of Continental Security (PHECS) and Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) declarations, and the outbreak continues to spread within and between countries. PAN highlighted four high-level, urgent priorities world leaders must take to end the ongoing emergency. 💥 Amplify the message. 💥 Get the latest in the Mpox Insights & Actions: Making Sense of Mpox Trackers Nov. 26 update. More Network mpox resources:
COP29 ended with a US$300 billion per year let down. Advocates and leaders — including UN Secretary General António Guterres, Kenya’s Special Envoy for Climate Change Amb. Ali Mohamed, and Global Citizen’s Friederike Röder — underscored the disappointing agreement was “too little, too late” for critically needed climate finance for mitigation, adaptation, loss & damage, and more. All is not lost, Friederike notes that COP30 in Belém may be able to deliver the US$1.3 trillion needed.
The U.K. pledged £310 million for the WHO’s Investment Round to support WHO's Fourteenth General Programme of Work.
The WHO and partners announced 10 projects that will receive almost US$ 2 million in grants to improve capacities in pathogen genomic surveillance.
Brazil, the UN, and UNESCO launched the Global Initiative for Information Integrity on Climate Change to counter climate disinformation.
The Global Preparedness Monitoring Board’s Joy Phumaphi spoke with Panorama Strategy and the END Fund on addressing the dual threats of climate change and infectious disease spread.
What we’re reading and listening to:
Sign up for Brown University Pandemic Center’s new weekly Tracking Report newsletter.
The ESWI Influenza Conference 2025 is calling for abstracts. Submit by May 18.
The Johns Hopkins Institute for Planetary Health is hiring a policy program associate. Apply by Dec. 31.
Have something to share with the Network? We accept communications, policy, and advocacy opportunities on a rolling basis.
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