SECTION 4 · INNOVATION & GROWTH

Data Analytics & Insights

Our software supports tens of millions of patient visits each year, creating a unique window into Africa's private health sector.

Intro

For decades, what happened in Africa's private sector was largely a mystery. And unraveling that mystery has never been more critical as global aid declines and the private sector is poised to fill many gaps. Meanwhile, looming threats like drug resistance are quietly evolving in a blind spot for many health systems.

Our team transforms anonymized data into actionable insights to help governments, funders, and researchers make evidence-based decisions and target resources where they're needed most. By combining our last-mile sales data with other sources — international trade records, donor procurement data — we surface patterns often missing from public datasets. Some of our past analyses, for instance, have revealed that Africa's private sector accounts for a far greater share of antimalarial sales than previously estimated.

In 2025, our team kicked off two new multi-year partnerships with the Gates Foundation and Unitaid, alongside another engagement with the Center for Global Development. This includes the launch of Maisha ACT, Africa's most comprehensive antimalarial tracker.

Case studies

Mapping the procurement transition as donor financing recedes

What essential medicines are at greatest risk if donors stop paying for them? How might low- and middle-income countries fill the gap, and what factors determine their ability to negotiate favorable prices from manufacturers? With major shifts in aid, governments face an uncertain procurement transition. We’re contributing data on supply patterns, price trends, and the relationship with WHO-prequalification status to a working group studying how that transition should be financed for malaria, HIV, TB, and family planning commodities.

Key Partners

Center for Global Development

Building the case for medicines made in Africa

Africa imports the majority of its essential medicines, leaving health systems vulnerable to volatile pricing, changes in trade policies, and supply chain disruptions. Building local manufacturing capacity is the long-term answer, but attracting these investments depends on high-quality evidence that justify the business case, such as market sizing and demand forecasting. Through 2028, we're generating key insights for African manufacturers with the goal of increasing regional production of medicines for malaria, HIV, and postpartum hemorrhage. We're also building a risk-rating tool to flag medicines at risk of quality issues and modeling carbon savings from regional production.

Key Partners

MedSure Africa consortium (US Pharmacopeia; Unitaid; Medicines Patent Pool; Market Access Africa; Medicines for All Institute); funded by Unitaid and the European Union

Painting a comprehensive picture of antimalarial use

For years, malaria care in Africa has been visible only in fragments, and private-sector demand was significantly underestimated. In March 2025, we launched a three-year effort to assemble a fuller picture of the antimalarial supply chain, surfacing important trends in the quality of care, commodity pricing, and anticipated gaps. Its first major milestone was the launch of Maisha ACT.

Key Partners

Gates Foundation; Unitaid

Spotlight · Maisha ACT

Africa's largest antimalarial tracker

From the Desk of

Daniel Rosen

Managing Director, Data Consulting

In November, we announced the official launch of Africa's most comprehensive tracker of antimalarial medicines. This dashboard tool, called Maisha ACT (Antimalarial Consumption Tracker), provides an unprecedented, near-real-time view of drug distribution and usage.

Maisha ACT, which now covers approximately 90% of antimalarial use across more than 40 African countries from 2017-2025, was announced at the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (ASTMH) conference in Toronto. At that event, I gave the first public demo of Maisha ACT, while experts underscored the need for better real-world data to curb rising threats like antimalarial drug resistance.

"The amounts and types of antimalarial drug sales in the private market tell us a lot about which way drug-resistance patterns are likely to evolve in the near future. This is critical now as artemisinin resistance is spreading in East Africa."

Dr. Maciej Boni · Epidemiologist & Professor, Temple University

Maisha ACT's early findings include that half of Africa's malaria medicines flow through the private sector, of which only about 20% meet WHO-PQ quality standards (though some African regulators are increasingly reaching comparable benchmarks for newly registered medicines). The data also show significant variation across countries in the mix of antimalarials on the market and the relative size of the private versus public sector.

Learn More & Sign Up

maishameds.org/maisha-act ↗

Maisha ACT is funded by the Gates Foundation, with co-financing from Unitaid through the Medicines Supply Resilience (MedSuRe) Africa project, which is led by the United States Pharmacopeia (USP). This funding enables Maisha Meds to make the platform freely available to nonprofit organizations, academic researchers, government agencies, and select African pharmaceutical manufacturers. Maisha ACT's public insights are made available via the RBM Partnership to End Malaria's global dashboard.

Our Commitment to Data Responsibility

Our first commitment is always to our users and the patients they serve. Pharmacies and clinics always maintain ownership of their own data, which we treat with the highest privacy and security standards. We hold ourselves to data protection laws in every country, and our best-in-class data systems can anonymize and aggregate data into a system-wide picture of what's happening across the health system — without ever revealing individual records. Ultimately, we provide the power of system-wide insights without ever compromising our promise to keep user data safe and secure.